


For Want of a Voxel

by Skye_Writer



Category: Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 57,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skye_Writer/pseuds/Skye_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Quorra didn't intervene in time on the lightcycle grid. Now Clu has Sam prisoner and Quorra and Kevin must figure out what to do next.<br/>(Originally posted on 4/13/2011. Was accidentally deleted and subsequently reposted 6/11/2011.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Matter of Timing

It’s all a matter of timing. A moment of hesitation could mean everything.

Quorra doesn’t think this when she pauses at the edge of the lightcycle grid, waiting for two sentries to pass. It occurs to her as she runs for the lightrunner that she might have gone by without being spotted, but what are a few seconds?

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


It’s all a matter of timing.

Here is what might have happened: the lightrunner would have burst in out of nowhere, destroying Clu’s lightcycle in his moment of near-triumph. Sam Flynn would have climbed in, Quorra would have gunned the engine, and they would have escaped into the Outlands.

But what are a few seconds?

Sam Flynn is holding his ground, but he won’t be for long. His heart beats a painful, panicked rhythm as he tightens his grip on the humming disc in his hand, scowling at Clu’s approaching lightcycle. He’s tired and sore, he’s scared (though he won’t admit it), and he wants nothing more than to—than to what? To escape? To go home? To find out, once and for all, what has happened to his father?

Or to _wake up_ —to escape this nightmare reality, and end what is looking to be the longest night of his life?

The lightcycle speeds closer, a faceless menace in orange and black. Sam clenches his jaw. He’s not going to run; he won’t give Clu the pleasure. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He just knows that he’s going to fight.

He doesn’t even get a chance.

Clu draws closer—Sam raises his disc to strike—

—and then pain explodes in his leg, _through_ his leg, and he falls to the ground, dropping his disc. He cries out in pain, tears pricking at his eyes, one hand groping blindly for the wound and encountering the warm stickiness of blood. And he hears, almost in the back of his mind, the continued roar of the crowd, and the hum of Clu’s lightcycle suddenly ceased. For a moment he sees a flash of orange—Clu’s foot, stepping near him—and then a heavy boot connects with his stomach, and for a moment he can’t even _breathe_. He gasps, he coughs, and he hears Clu’s derisive laugh, so unsettling because it’s in his father’s voice.

And then he hears something else—the loud roar of an engine, and the thud of something heavy against the floor of the grid. Sam manages to open his eyes and half sit up, his weight balanced on one arm, and he sees, very near him and very near Clu, who has turned toward it, a—he wants to call it a car, but it looks more like a dune buggy or something similar, dark and sleek like everything else here.

“ _Illegal combatant on the grid._ ” The female voice booms out above the noise.

The door to the buggy opens and Sam sees the program driving it, a slim figure wearing the same kind of face-obscuring helmet Clu is wearing now. There is a tense moment of almost-silence between them.

“ _Illegal combatant on the grid._ ”

Clu laughs again, and he picks something up off the ground—Sam’s disc. He doesn’t even throw it at the program. He tosses it lightly, and it lands on the buggy’s second empty seat.

“Game on,” Clu says, and Sam can almost imagine the smirk on his face.

Sam manages to push himself up on one knee. The gash on his left leg is still painful and bleeding, but he wonders, staring at Clu and the buggy just a few yards away, if he’d be able to make a run for it, dive into the buggy, and—

“ _System failure. Release Rinzler._ ”

The roar of the buggy’s engine increases again, and Sam stares, shaking with pain and exhaustion, as its tires squeal and it speeds away, pursued seconds later by three lightcycles in red. Just moments after that, there’s an enormous explosion on the far end of the grid, but Sam doesn’t know what that might mean for the program driving the buggy. He doesn’t get to find out, either, for Clu turns and strides back over to him, his helmet now gone, an unsettling smirk on his face.

Sam glowers at him, and then, quick as lightning, Clu strikes the side of his head. Sam loses what little balance he had, falling once again to the hard floor of the grid, seeing nothing for a moment but a sometimes multi-colored whiteness, his head now pounding along with his injured leg and his heart.

He hears chaotic noise around him—something roaring overhead, another explosion in the distance—and then, Clu’s voice (his _father’s_ voice, but full of more coldness than Sam could even imagine his father being capable of).

“Secure him.”

Hands grab his arms, pulling him up. “On your feet,” says a harshly electronic voice, far too near his ear. Sam twitches away from the sound, which only makes his head pound even harder, but he doesn’t struggle to get away from the programs as they pull him to his feet. There’s no point now.

He can barely walk without limping heavily; the gash along his left thigh throbs and burns even when he’s only putting a little weight on it. The programs have to almost drag him to the mouth of Clu’s ship, where Clu stands waiting, that self-satisfied smirk still on his face. They pause there, and Sam stands up a little straighter, putting as much weight as he can on his good leg and clenching his jaw.

Clu just smirks. “You’re a little harder to kill than I thought you’d be,” he says.

Sam Flynn wants, in that moment, to shake free of the programs gripping his arms and deck this _bastard_ , who cares if he looks like his father. Several variations on this theme run through his mind, but he instantly thinks better of them. He has a feeling Clu would kill him if he tried something like that and—he thinks of his leg, still throbbing and bleeding a little.

If he can bleed here, he can probably bleed out.

Sam Flynn only glares at him.

“Hm. Well. Lock him up,” he says to one of the programs. “And guard him. Closely.”

He walks away and Sam is forced forward again, still limping as they half-drag him onto Clu’s ship and into a small chamber he hadn’t noticed on his first visit here. One of the programs pushes him roughly inside; the door hisses shut behind him and he is alone in the tiny room. He collapses against the wall, sliding down until his body hits the small bench installed there.

Sam leans back, closing his eyes. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He’s not sure he wants to guess.

After a while, he sleeps.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


Quorra shakes as she drives through the Outlands, back to the safehouse. She tries not to glance at the seat beside her, empty.

Empty save for the disc of Sam Flynn.

Even after she arrives in the safehouse garage, she sits, silent and shaking still, staring at Sam Flynn’s disc. She doesn’t know how she’s going to tell him, but she knows she has to. Sam Flynn… it has to be—it can _only_ be Flynn’s son. Clu wouldn’t have gone to such elaborate trouble for a random program. Perhaps for a random User, but… She shakes her head. After a moment, she picks up the abandoned disc and climbs out of the lightrunner.

The safehouse is dark. He meditates in the center of the room, and as she approaches, the disc held loosely in her left hand, he speaks.

“Quorra.” His voice is a low, husky whisper. “I dreamed of Tron. First time in years.”

She says nothing, but kneels beside him, bowing her head.

“I’m afraid something’s happened.”

Her grip on the disc tightens. “Something _has_ happened,” she says quietly.

There’s a brief silence, and then Flynn speaks again, his voice suddenly strained. “Quorra.”

She looks up at him. He stares intently at the vast window that reveals the Outlands and, in the distance, the city. She follows his gaze, and knows instantly what has captured his attention.

Shining in the distance is the clear, white light of the portal to the Users’ world. Flynn turns to her, and she can see that he is shocked. “Quorra, what...?”

She swallows and says, her voice still quiet, “I was at the lightcycle grid when Clu showed up. He… he had a User, and he went up against him in a match. I tried to intervene, but…” She holds up the disc. “All I got was this.”

Flynn doesn’t even glance at the disc. “Who was it?” he asks, and she knows exactly what he means.

She doesn’t know how to tell him gently. She wishes she did.

She wishes, for just a moment, that she had been _better_ —that she had intervened at the right moment, that she had saved Sam Flynn, that she had averted this inevitable heartbreak.

She can do nothing but tell him, though. He wants to know.

“They said his name was Sam Flynn,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.

His eyes widen for just a moment, and then he closes them and bows his head. “Thank you, Quorra.”

She says nothing. There’s nothing to say.

Gently he takes the disc from her hand. Then he stands and walks forward, out to the window opening to the Outlands. She watches him, but does not follow. She stays kneeling, silent.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


He stares at the portal, then looks down at the disc in his hand. He takes it in both hands and opens it. The portrait of a young man appears with a flicker of blue-white light, and for an instant he feels as though he is nothing, as though he is floating, cut off and drifting away from the solid world beneath his feet.

It’s Sam.

He shouldn’t be able to recognize him, not after twenty-one years and well over a thousand cycles, but he can see in this face a bit of himself, and a bit of Jordan as well. It’s _Sam_ , his son, his wide-eyed, mop-haired kiddo, all grown up now.

And he’s here, on the Grid.

Flynn sighs and closes out the disc. The portrait of Sam vanishes with a flicker-flash of light.

It’s an obvious trap, almost too obvious. He knows what Clu expects him to do with this revelation: he expects him to act rashly. To rush back onto the Grid to rescue his son, or to take advantage of the Portal, and attempt an escape to the real world.

Either course would give Clu ample opportunity to accomplish what has eluded him for these thousand cycles: to acquire Flynn’s own disc, the master key, and escape to the real world himself. Flynn knows he cannot allow that to happen, especially now, with the Portal open and ready to be used.

He looks back up at the star-like point of light in the distance, and then his gaze drifts down to the city, where Sam is no doubt being held.

He can’t do nothing, either, he realizes, not while Sam still lives. He watches the horizon and calms and organizes his thoughts, trying to decide what course of action to take next.


	2. The Waiting Game

He waits. He’s made the first move, and now it’s Flynn’s turn. He has the ultimate leverage this time: the boy Sam Flynn, the son Flynn had spoken of so fondly before, back before he’d sealed his own fate and started this game. Before he betrayed the plan to imperfection.

If he wants to save his son, he’ll come. He’ll do something, and break the stalemate at last.

He sits. He waits. He stares into the Outlands.

He’s out there somewhere, hiding.

“Your move, Flynn, come on,” he says, his voice low. It’s an illogical action, but he doesn’t care. Flynn knows he’s here, knows he’s waiting. “ _Come on._ ”

He’s covered every angle he can think of. The sentries guarding the ways in and out of the city have been placed on high alert. The Recognizer sweeps over the city have been intensified as well. He has also, very quietly and privately, sent word to the Rectifier: _Watch the Portal. As long as it remains, expect me._

If he makes the right moves, he will win this game at last. He has been waiting for this, waiting since Flynn vanished from the Grid, forfeiting his move, breaking the rules, putting the game on hold. Forcing him to wait, but allowing him at last to follow the plan unhindered. It had been a victory, but not a complete one. He was still trapped here, in the cage of Flynn’s creation, unable to escape into the system beyond the Portal and continue there his work for the good of this system.

So he waited until, at last, opportunity arrived: the brief and mysterious signal from the User world. It was no portal, no escape, he had soon deduced, but it was still an opportunity. Some User had been trying to contact Flynn here. Some User, he reasoned, that might yet stumble onto the Grid, and unwittingly set the game in motion again.

It is just his luck, he thinks, smiling, that that User was Sam Flynn.

**ooo ooo ooo**

After a short while, Flynn steps back through the window and into the room. Quorra, still kneeling, bows her head as he approaches her. It’s only when he gently touches her shoulder that she can bring herself to look up at him, and she sees in his face that he is calm.

He smiles a little. “It’s all right, Quorra,” he says. “Come on.” He helps her to her feet with his free hand. He is still holding Sam’s disc, and she glances at it while she stands.

“What are we going to do about…” She trails off. She doesn’t know how to say it.

“We’ll wait for now,” he says, his expression falling back into inscrutable calmness. “See if Clu has anything else up his sleeve.”

Quorra nods. There are a dozen questions warring in her mind, worries and fears that have arisen since she blasted her way out of the lightcycle grid. Since she failed to save Sam Flynn. She does not ask these questions, but as Flynn walks over to sit by the fireplace, she cannot help but say _something._

“I’m sorry,” she says, taking a few steps after him. Flynn stops and turns to face her. “I’m—I’m sorry I didn’t—“

“Quorra.” He walks back over to her and grips her shoulder tightly in his hand. “It’s not your fault,” he says, and she does not argue, though she wants to. “It’ll be all right.”

She nods again, and Flynn manages another small smile before he squeezes her shoulder and turns away again, taking a seat in one of the chairs near the fireplace. She watches for a moment as he turns the disc over in his hands slowly, then turns away herself, going down the few short steps that lead to one of the adjoining hallways. She walks to her room and closes the door behind her.

Flynn’s wrong, she thinks. It _is_ her fault. Again that wish crosses her mind—she should have been better. She should have been faster, gotten on the grid in time to save Sam Flynn. She should have done more. She could have saved Sam Flynn, she could have intervened in time and brought him here instead of only his disc, but she didn’t. She failed.

She leans against the door, closing her eyes. She remembers then what Flynn has taught her about meditation, about letting go.

She breathes.

She concentrates on breathing, letting her worries, her fears, her _guilt_ lie quiescent in her mind, untouched. She breathes in and out slowly, and gradually lets each thought go. What has happened, what is happening, what might yet happen all drain away, and when she opens her eyes again she feels calmer. The thoughts are not gone entirely, but they are no longer dominating her. She pushes herself away from the door and crosses the room to her chest of drawers.

They have to do something, she thinks, gazing her reflection in the mirror above the chest of drawers. She thinks of what little she saw of Sam Flynn on the lightcycle grid, injured and in pain, for Users are at once more sturdy and more fragile than programs. She doesn’t know what Clu might do to him, but she knows all too well how cruel Clu can be.

They have to do something, and if Flynn cannot join her—for even Quorra knows what Clu is trying to do in this—then she will do it alone. Sam Flynn is a User, the son of the Creator. She took risks to save him in the lightcycle grid and failed there. She will risk herself again to save him from Clu, and she is determined this time to succeed.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Flynn sits, thinking, turning Sam’s disc over in his hands. He glances up, sometimes, to look at the Portal, still bright and shining in the distance.

His instinct is to do nothing. To wait, to see how things play out. Noninterference. It’s how he’s played the game for the last thousand cycles, but as he considers this situation, this new and unforeseen development, he’s almost certain that strategy will fail him. Even if he only waits until the Portal closes to act, he cannot be sure of what Clu will do.

In the end, he can’t be sure that Clu will spare Sam’s life.

Flynn looks again at Sam’s disc. The inner ring glows with a bright, white light, and when Flynn adjusts his grip around it, the outer ring lights up as well, humming quietly. The disc is live, and synchronized with Sam no matter how far away he is. It is, for now, the only way he can assure himself that Sam is alive, the only sign he has of what’s happening to him in the city.

The best way to win Clu’s game is to avoid playing it, he’s learned, to let other players introduce themselves on the board, but now Clu has finally gained a trump card. Flynn’s hand is forced. He wants to wait, but he knows he can’t. He has to do something.

Flynn sighs, and bows his head. They’ll have to go into the city, where Flynn has not set foot since he first withdrew from Clu’s game. And that’s only the first step. He doesn’t know where Sam might be held, whether Clu is keeping him aboard his command ship or somewhere else in the vast environs of the city. They’ll find him somehow—they have to—but it will be difficult and dangerous.

Flynn looks at the disc, then back up at the city. “Hang in there, kiddo,” he says to the horizon.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Sam Flynn wakes with a wince and a ragged gasp of pain. Everything— _everything_ hurts. His muscles are stiff and sore; even sitting up a little straighter on this narrow bench is difficult. The gash on his arm from his duel with Rinzler throbs a little, but it is nothing compared to the wound on his leg. It’s stopped bleeding from what he can tell (the dim, orange light of his cell makes it difficult to see anything clearly), but it aches unlike anything he’s ever felt before, throbbing in time to his heartbeat and sending occasional twinges of burning, tingling pain up and down his thigh.

He touches the wound gingerly, wincing as a fresh wave of pain moves up his leg. The gash is mostly crusted over with dried blood, but his fingers (themselves stained with blood) find a few spots still sticky with it. It’s also hot, way hotter than he thinks it should be.

 _That’s not good._ But he doesn’t even have to fight down the panic. There is no panic. He just sighs, and slowly leans back again, pressing his head against the cool metal of the wall behind him. “Goddammit,” he whispers, clenching his hand into a fist.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed since he went to sleep. It doesn’t feel like more than maybe an hour or two, but he can’t be sure. He glances at the door, about a foot and a half in front of him. There’s a hexagon-shaped window in it, and through it he can see the back of a black helmet. He remembers Clu’s words from the lightcycle arena: _“Guard him. Closely.”_

Sam knows he’s stuck here, and there’s nothing he can do about it. He still doesn’t want to think about what might happen to him next, but his thoughts wander there anyway, going over in too-vivid detail some of the things that have happened to him since he arrived on the Grid. He almost can’t help but dwell on Clu, the program who wears his father’s face and speaks with his father’s voice.

 _“Where is he? What’d you do to him?”_

 _“The same thing I’m going to do to you.”_

He closes his eyes, but doesn’t drift off to sleep again. The questions chase each other around his mind. Where is his father? What happened to him?

Is he here, on the Grid, still alive somewhere? Or is he… He can’t finish the thought in words, but the possibility resounds in feelings, making his stomach turn. It’s strange, really. He’s believed, really, truly _believed_ that his father was dead, or hiding so well and so deep that he didn’t care to come back to what he left behind. For almost twenty-one years that has been his reality. But now…

He doesn’t want to believe it anymore. Even after what Clu said, he wants, almost desperately now, to believe that his father is still alive. That he might be here somewhere, that he’s somehow been here all along.

The Grid, that computer fairy-tale from his childhood, is real. Why shouldn’t his father be alive as well?

The sound of voices on the other side of the door breaks up his train of thought. Sam sits up a little, trying to listen, but he can’t make out the words. That doesn’t matter, because two seconds later the door hisses open; Sam jumps a little in shock, and winces as all his injuries ache in protest. The two black-clad guards standing in the door regard him silently for a moment, and then one of them steps forward and seizes him roughly by the arm, dragging him to his feet.

Sam stumbles, letting out a low grunt as the gash on his leg shifts, sending a sharp knife of pain up his leg. He thinks he feels it open again, but he can’t look to make sure. The programs have grabbed his arms and are marching him through a brightly-lit hallway he’s seen before. As they drag him through a door and up a ramped hallway, Sam suddenly realizes what’s going on—they’re taking him to see Clu.

This room is a bit smaller than the one they brought him to back at the game arena. It’s emptier, too; it holds almost nothing save a low, throne-like seat, where Clu sits, his back to the room. The wall opposite the door is dominated by an enormous picture window of orange-tinted glass, looking out on the city and the rough terrain beyond it.

The guards deposit Sam in the center of the room, on a triangular insignia imprinted on the floor. They step away from him, and Sam glances over his shoulder to see them walking away, leaving the room. He’s almost relieved until he sees another black-clad figure stalking through the door—Rinzler.

The program stops directly behind Sam. Sam can hear him there, rumbling quietly like an old desktop tower.

The doors hiss shut again, and there is silence. They are alone, the three of them, undisturbed and unseen.

Sam stands there, keeping his weight off his bad leg as best he can manage, waiting. He’s shaking, partly from exhaustion and injury, but also from a lingering fear in the back of his mind. He doesn’t know why Rinzler is here, or even what Clu wants from him. The immediate future is a frightening mystery, and when he thinks of his injuries, still throbbing and sore, he can’t help but shudder a little.

Clu stands eventually, and turns towards Sam, clasping his hands behinds his back. He smirks, and Sam clenches his jaw and glares back at him, trying to brace himself for whatever’s coming next.

Clu just keeps smiling. “Hello, Sam,” he says.


	3. Fight or Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains some strong language, some violence, and intense psychological terror.

Sam Flynn is shaking.

He’s shaking because he’s injured, because he’s been through so damn much tonight and his body’s just about had enough. _He’s_ just about had enough. As he glares at Clu, his stomach twists, and those desires that have been beating around the back of his brain since this all started surge forth again: he wants to go home, to climb up to his bed in the loft and collapse on the mattress and sleep for twelve hours. He wants to play with his dog. He wants to spend a sunny afternoon pulling parts out of his father’s old Ducati, making notes with a scraped and grease-covered hand on what he needs to find to get the old bike running again.

But he can’t. He stands here, a world away from everything, shaking, his jaw clenched and his expression grim.

He’s shaking because, deep down, he’s scared. Clu’s in front of him and Rinzler’s behind him, two known threats menacing him from both sides. He can almost feel Rinzler standing there, just a few feet away, and he can hear too clearly his low, crackling growl. The sound is starting to work its way under Sam’s skin. He wants to make it stop, or at least get away from it, but he can’t—he can only stand here, unable to move, stuck between two choices but unable to make either.

And then there’s Clu, the program who is not his father but looks like him, looks so much like him that even now Sam can’t quite process it. He’s not his father, and yet he looks almost exactly like him, as if someone has taken Sam’s last memories of his father and brought them eerily to life. He remembers the shock when Clu first revealed himself, that feeling like being punched in the stomach, and how his shock and relief (for a brief moment he had felt relief) had turned to a sickening dread as he realized something, _something_ was wrong.

Something is wrong. Sam can see it in Clu’s too-casual smile, sense it in the atmosphere of the room. Something is wrong, and it’s about to get worse.

“What do you want?” Sam asks, his voice low.

“I just want to have a little chat,” Clu replies. His expression is pleasant, his tone nonchalant. He paces in front of Sam, a few steps one way, a few steps the other.

“How much do you know?” he asks, sounding for all the world like someone just asking a curious question.

For a moment, Sam is genuinely confused. “About what?”

Clu stops pacing then, and turns toward Sam. He’s still smiling, but the sight makes Sam’s stomach twist itself into knots again. He can’t stand this, this _waiting,_ this knowing that something, _something_ is wrong without knowing _what_ —it’s only making his heart beat faster, making the panic build slowly and for no reason—

“About this,” Clu says, gesturing grandly with one hand. “Our little project. He had to have told you something.”

Sam swallows. There’s no doubt in his mind who the “he” is.

Clu waits, still smiling.

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice now shaking along with the rest of him. It’s technically a lie, and he barely has time to wonder if Clu will spot it before he plows on, driven by his own exhausted nervousness and the unbalancing strangeness of Clu’s gaze. “He said he made the Grid. That he built it with Tron and—and you. And that there was some miracle here, something happened, and then he…” _Walked out the door and disappeared._

For a moment he’s reliving that night in the back of his mind, that night and the horrible weeks that followed it, but then Clu snaps his attention back to the present.

“What did he tell you about the isomorphs?” he asks, and while he still wears that pleasant smile, something has hardened in his eyes, and Sam suddenly wants to back away from him, but he can’t, not with Rinzler behind him too.

“About the what?” He’s never heard the word before, not in the way Clu’s using it. “I—I don’t know,” he stammers, his heart pounding faster as Clu’s grin widens a little. He doesn’t know what Clu wants to hear, or what the hell Clu even expects him to _know._ “I don’t know,” he says again. “He never—he disappeared right after, he never told me anything, okay?!” His voice rises almost to a shout. It’s his only defense. He can’t run, he can’t even _move._ He can only yell, and he knows that’s not enough to make this end.

Clu grins. Sam doesn’t for a moment believe it’s because he’s said the right thing; he’s worrying now that he’s said something wrong.

“And you never saw him again?” he asks. It’s almost a sneer, lightly mocking, too nonchalant, too casual.

Sam clenches his jaw and says nothing. He wishes this was over. Not even this night, just this moment, this being caught between.

“I remember the last time I saw Flynn,” Clu says, starting to pace again.

Sam feels his stomach drop. _Oh, God,_ he thinks. _No._ He doesn’t want to hear this, he doesn’t want to be here, listening to what Clu is saying, but he can’t move—Rinzler’s still behind him, still growling quietly like some dog called to heel.

“It was, oh, about twelve hundred cycles ago.” He glances at Sam, as if Sam is supposed to understand what he’s talking about. Sam is clenching his jaw so hard it’s starting to hurt.

“He was crawling away from me.” The nonchalance has slowly left Clu’s voice. All that’s left is a smooth, calculated menace. Sam’s skin crawls. He doesn’t want to listen to this, to think about what it probably means. But Clu goes on, still smiling, his voice growing quieter with every word.

“It was pathetic, really.” He stops pacing and turns toward Sam. He steps closer, that awful smile still on his face. “To see how far he’d fallen.”

In the back of his mind, Sam Flynn knows that Clu is trying to provoke him. But the rest of him doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to hear this. He doesn’t want to let the man who did the deed tell him how his father died.

And so, in that moment, without thinking about it, he raises his left arm, hand curled into a fist, and punches Clu as hard as he can.

For a moment, as he watches Clu stumble back and as his hand begins to throb from the pain of impact, he feels a grim relief in having finally _done_ something.

That moment ends half a second later, when something swiftly kicks his legs out from under him. He falls, landing on the floor with a smack that knocks the breath out of him, his head hitting the cold metal hard enough to make his teeth shudder. He feels a sharp stab of pain in his mouth, tastes the warm metal tang of the blood. His eyes are screwed shut from the pain, and as his mind reels, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, he feels a heavy weight on his back, holding him down, and a firm hand gripping the back of his neck.

His ears slowly stop ringing from the blow, and now all he can hear is Rinzler’s low growl, closer than ever and somehow louder as well.

Sam swallows, trying not to choke on the blood and spit in his mouth. It’s hard to breathe, and when he finally opens his eyes all he can see is the orange circuitry of Clu’s boots, just a few feet away from his face.

“Pull him up,” Clu says, his voice low.

The weight on Sam’s back vanishes, and Sam stumbles, wildly off balance, as Rinzler grabs his arm and drags him back up to his feet. He winces as the gash on his leg throbs painfully, sending another tingling wave of pain down his whole leg, and it keeps aching even when he puts his weight on his good leg again.

 _Goddammit,_ he thinks. _I shouldn’t have done that._ He swallows again, grimacing at the taste of the blood still filling his mouth, and finally he turns his attention back to Clu.

Almost at once, he thinks, _I_ really _shouldn’t have done that._

Clu is still smiling at him, but there is nothing genial in his expression. “You’ve got more fight in you than he did,” he says quietly, his smiling widening a bit.

Sam has to fight the urge to deck him all over again. He clenches his jaw and then, because he can’t do _nothing_ , not anymore, he spits at Clu’s feet. It’s a stupid thing to do, about as stupid as punching him, but Sam doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t want to put up with this shit.

Clu only glances at the floor before returning his attention to Sam. “I was almost impressed.” His eyes dart briefly away from Sam—towards Rinzler, Sam realizes, as the program seizes his arms and holds them behind his back. Sam struggles, in spite of the painful tension in his muscles and the aching cut on his right arm, but it doesn’t do any good; Rinzler’s grip is iron-clad.

 _Shit._

“Still, if you want to do things this way…” He reaches up and in one smooth motion pulls his disc off his back and ignites it.

Sam can’t help it. He surges backwards, struggling uselessly against Rinzler, not caring that he’s putting weight on his bad leg, which is only making it hurt worse, but he doesn’t care, he just wants to _get away—_

“Oh, relax.” Clu is still grinning, and as Rinzler forces Sam into stillness again he brings the flat of his disc up to rest under Sam’s chin, very near his throat. Sam freezes, his heart beating faster than ever. He almost can’t breathe, he’s so afraid of what might happen. The disc doesn’t cut into his skin, but he can feel it there, burning hot but not burning him, so goddamn close to his own death, and now he truly cannot move, he can do nothing but stand here, restrained and waiting for whatever’s coming next, staring into the eyes of his father’s murderer.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Clu says, his voice just above a whisper. “Not just yet.”

Sam can’t move. He breathes slowly, shallowly, hyperaware of the burning disc at his throat. If he moves, if he swallows, if he so much as shifts his weight the wrong way—he tries not to think about that, but it’s all that comes to mind as he stares into Clu’s eyes, which are almost his father’s eyes, almost, but they are colder, darker, unsmiling, unkind. And he can’t look away, can’t tear his eyes away from Clu’s face, darkly smiling, smiling without mirth or happiness. Smiling coldly.

He can’t move. His arms feel strange from the lock Rinzler has on them. The cut on his right arm throbs. The gash on his left leg throbs harder, and he is almost certain now that it is bleeding again, bleeding slowly, blood seeping in the space between his suit and his skin, blood trickling down his leg and over the bright white lights of the circuitry. He aches all over, and he is tired in his bones. He wants this to end, but he can’t move. He stares at Clu, wondering if the fear he has been trying so hard to deny all night is readable on his face, or if he is still somehow succeeding in acting this part, acting as though he is fearless and unafraid, even in the face of _this._

He can’t move, and Clu knows it.

After an eternity or what seems like one, Clu slowly pulls his disc away from Sam’s throat. Sam can’t help it—he lets out a short sigh of relief. Clu is still smiling as he shifts the disc to his left hand and steps to Sam’s left.

“You’re too hard to kill,” he says, “but all the same…” And then, before Sam even has time to realize what’s going on, he runs one finger swiftly up the length of the gash on his leg.

The wound briefly explodes with pain, pain that radiates up and down Sam’s leg, making him cry out, a shout that makes nothing better. Whatever clotting or scabbing over that has happened since the lightcycle grid is gone now; the wound is open again, bleeding freely, throbbing like the cut had been made two seconds ago, not two hours. Sam is barely putting weight on the leg, but it still hurts, still aches, still makes him grit his teeth, quelling another shout or a stream of invective.

And when he manages to open his eyes against the pain again, he sees that Clu is still, _still_ smiling. He is not looking at Sam; he is examining the blood on his fingertip. It’s nearly invisible thanks to the dim light and his black gloves, but Sam can just make it out, a slick and shiny spot of light where no light was before.

His gaze shifts back to Sam. “Users are so fragile.”

Sam clenches his jaw. There’s nothing left he wants to say to this—this _bastard_ , this murderer, this psychotic waste of—of code and hard drive space. He just wants this to _end_ , he wants to wake up and find that this has all been a deranged nightmare, that it is not real, despite every painful piece of evidence to the contrary.

“Still.” Clu tosses his disc back to his right hand. “I wonder how much it would take to really break you.”

Slowly, he brings the hot and humming edge of the disc up alongside the open wound on Sam’s leg, all the while never looking away from Sam, never letting his awful smile break or fade.

Sam Flynn shakes. He shakes because he can _feel_ that goddamn disc by his leg, feel its heat burning through the wound, somehow making the pain worse from mere proximity. He shakes because he _doesn’t fucking know_ what’s going on, or why this is happening, or what’s going to happen next, or what Clu _wants_ from him.

He shakes because he is afraid, and he can’t take this anymore.

And so he fights back.

He kicks out at Clu with his good leg, throwing his weight back on Rinzler in the same moment. He falls to the ground again, and everything hurts again, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to deal with this anymore.

Rinzler somehow avoids getting pinned beneath him, and Sam is restrained again, pinned to the floor by a hand on the back of his neck.

And then he hears the hiss of the door opening.

He can’t see what’s going on. When he opens his eyes, all he can see are Clu’s feet, and he doesn’t want to look at them. He closes his eyes. He listens to the hum of the ship, Rinzler’s low and crackling growl, and now a voice. The voice of Clu’s head lackey, the program who ridiculed him and introduced Clu on the lightcycle grid.

“Sir.”

Silence.

“I—we’ve had a report from the southwest border sectors. Sentries have reported Flynn’s lightcycle entering the city.”

Sam’s breath catches in his throat. _What?_

“They’re… currently in pursuit, but it is highly probable they’ll capture him. Shall I adjust course to rendezvous?”

Silence again. Sam’s mind is reeling. _Flynn’s lightcycle. Dad? But isn’t he…?_

“Do it,” Clu says.

“Yes sir.”

“And lock him back up.”

And then Rinzler drags Sam to his feet again, and Sam is led back to his cramped cell to recover, his mind reeling.

**ooo ooo ooo**

He takes the User back to the throne ship’s only cell. A sentry guards the door once the User is locked inside.

He returns to his master’s side as a course is plotted to the southwest sectors. There they will capture Flynn the Creator.

He says nothing as he reenters the throne room. He never speaks, save when he needs to, and he rarely needs to speak. He is quiet. He waits, ready for his master’s orders.

There is liquid on the floor here. Blood. From the User. It is in spots and streaks on the floor.

…why does he know that it is blood?

Users.

Users bleed.  
Programs derezz.  
He knows this, but he does not remember where he learned it.

He waits.

He considers the interrogation. His master had the upper hand, as he always does. The User was confused. The User was injured.

He hesitated when the User struck his master. It was only a moment’s hesitation. He overcame it almost at once, and acted in defense of his master, neutralizing the threat from the User and awaiting further orders. Just as he has always done.

But he hesitated when the User struck his master.

It was only a moment’s hesitation.

But he does not know why.

He looks at the blood on the floor. The blood from the User.

He does not know why he knows of the distinction between programs and Users.

He does not know why he hesitated when the User struck his master.

He considers the interrogation again. His master had the upper hand, as he always does. The User was confused. The User knows nothing of the Grid, for all that he is Flynn the Creator’s son.

But there was a name.

He followed the interrogation closely. He listened. He knew of all the things his master spoke of, save those things he does not have proper permissions to know.

The User spoke of a “miracle.” He knew this so-called “miracle”—the isomorphs, now all destroyed for their viral encroaching on the city.

The User spoke of Flynn the Creator. He knew of Flynn. His master had been created by him, but had overcome him. He had helped his master in this.

The User spoke of Tron. He did not know this name. He still does not know this name.

He searches the banks of his memory for “Tron.” His search turns up nothing.

He searches again for “Tron.” His search again turns up nothing.

Tron. Tron. Why does he search for this name?

The User spoke of Tron.

Users.

Tron.

Users bleed.  
Programs derezz.  
 _I fight—_

He shakes his head. His master has told him many times over the cycles to ignore these… outbursts. They are malfunctions. Bad code. Errors and imperfections that even his master cannot eliminate.

That he knows the distinction between programs and Users is not important.

That he hesitated when the User struck his master is not important.

That he does not know the name of Tron is not important.

They are errors, and nothing more.

He looks away from the blood on the floor. He walks forward to stand beside his master, as they go to capture Flynn the Creator at last.


	4. The First Move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note regarding the timeline here: this chapter starts more in line with where the Quorra and Kevin scenes in Chapter Two left off, but by the end it's mostly caught up with where Chapter Three ended.

Flynn is still lost in his own thoughts, guessing and second-guessing what his first move should be, when a movement in the corner of his eye makes him look up. “Quorra?”

She’s almost on the lift down to the garage when she stops, and she turns towards Flynn as he gets up and walks over to her. She looks a little surprised that he’s stopped her, but her jaw is clenched and her face is not filled with the quiet wonder that usually occupies it.

He already knows what her answer will be, but he asks the question anyway: “Where are you going?”

Quorra looks down at the floor a moment, fidgeting with something in her hand before she looks back up at him to reply. “I’m going to save Sam Flynn,” she says.

He doesn’t look at it, but his grip on Sam’s disc, still in one hand, tightens just a little. “And you’re going alone?”

Almost at once the fierceness fades from her face. “I—you don’t have to go,” she says quickly. “I can get back into the city, I can find Sam for you. If you come—“ She falters for just a moment, then plows on again, determined as ever. “If you come, then Clu might—“

And in that moment he makes his decision. He could let her go, he knows; she’s made her way in and out of the city countless times, and she’s a capable fighter. It’s possible that she could find Sam on her own, get him away from Clu, and either bring him back here or make sure he gets to the Portal before it closes. He could stay here, and thwart Clu’s plans by doing what he has always done: nothing.

But not this time.

“We’ll take things as they come,” he says. “You don’t have to do this alone, Q.”

“But if Clu gets your disc—“

“We’ll take things as they come,” he says again, gently. After a moment, Quorra nods. “Prepare the lightrunner. I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

She nods again and he turns away, walking over to his alcove bedroom. He glances back over his shoulder as she takes the lift down the garage, then sighs, shaking his head. Of course she would want to go alone; even after almost a thousand cycles, he’s still the Creator to her. She still thinks she’s indebted to him for saving her life, for protecting her and keeping her safe. She wants to return the favor.

But he can’t let her go alone, not this time. Not for Sam. He pauses in front of his dresser and looks down at the disc in his hand, Sam’s disc. He almost wants to open it again, to see his son’s face again, to study it, to learn it until it comes as naturally to his mind as his memories of little six-year-old Sam. But there’s no time for that, not now. Maybe there will be, if they’re lucky. But not now.

He sets Sam’s disc down on top of the dresser, then reaches back with one hand and unhooks his own disc. He’s long preferred wearing white to black, but he has a feeling that black will be a great deal less conspicuous once they make it into the city. He opens the disc partially to make the necessary cosmetic changes, which is as simple as touching his finger to a single piece of code, then closes it again and hooks it back on the mount on his back to let the changes synchronize, the white material of his clothing now slowly and silently changing to black.

 _God, I hope this isn’t a mistake,_ he thinks, his eyes drifting again to Sam’s disc. It’s been over a thousand cycles since he last saw Clu, since he last walked through the streets of the city, but he’s certain that Clu has long had a plan ready for his eventual return. There’s so much that can go wrong. They may not even get the opportunity to _find_ Sam, much less rescue him.

They have to try, though. Sam doesn’t deserve to be caught up in all this, and if Flynn can at least get him away from Clu, he’ll be content. He picks up Sam’s disc again, and opens the dresser to pull out his cloak and boots.

As he sits on his bed and pulls on the boots, he thinks again that this might be a mistake. There’s so much at risk if he goes himself, especially now. Quorra’s proven herself capable of infiltrating the city more than once in the past, he reminds himself. He could change his mind. He could let her go alone, and take the path that risks the least.

He glances at Sam’s disc again. _Some things are worth the risk._

As he walks over to the lift to wait for Quorra, his gaze falls on his old lightcycle. He hasn’t taken the old thing out in ages, partly because he’s had little need to go far into the Outlands of late. Still, he thinks, it might be useful…

He kneels next to the bike and begins working to reduce it to a transportable baton. He’s still working a short while later, when Quorra returns on the lift.

 **ooo ooo ooo**

Quorra brings the lightrunner to a stop just near the top of a rocky ridge overlooking the city. She hits a switch on the dash to turn the external lights off, but her gaze never shifts from the paved road just a few hundred yards ahead, guarded on almost every side by sentries in black and red. “I…” She swallows, and glances over the road again, counting the sentries in her head. “I can’t get through that. There are too many of them. And this is usually the least-guarded gate in the city.”

Flynn curses under his breath. “He’s been expecting us.” There is a long silence as they both regard this first obstacle. Quorra knows she should have seen this coming; she made too much of a stir on the lightcycle grid when she tried to rescue Sam Flynn. Of course Clu would do everything he could to make sure she couldn’t return to the city without being captured. To make sure Flynn couldn’t return without being captured. _He shouldn’t have come,_ she thinks. _This is what_ Clu _wants us to do, and it’s going to—no. There has to be another way._

Flynn’s voice breaks through her thoughts. “Could you make it through if I drew some of them off?”

“Maybe, but I…” She glances at him, and repeats his question in her mind. Her eyes widen as the realization hits, but Flynn is already opening the hatch and stepping out, stepping up the ridge towards the city, towards the road lined with Clu’s sentries.

She stumbles out her side of the lightrunner, her feet unsteady on the rocky landscape as she hurries after Flynn. “Flynn, wait—!”

He’s stopped at the top of the ridge, though, and he glances back at her. “I’m not going anywhere, Q,” he says, smiling a little. “Not yet.”

Quorra swallows and manages to nod, all the while internally berating herself for jumping to conclusions. _He knows what he’s doing. Trust him. He’s never led you wrong before._

“I had an idea.” He reaches into his cloak and pulls out the silvery-white baton of his lightcycle and with a quick turn of his wrist rezzes the bike up in front of him. “If I know Clu,” he continues, kneeling down next to the lightcycle and touching its side with one hand, “then he’s waiting for us. He probably has the lightrunner identified, after you showed up on the lightcycle grid.”

“Yes…?” Quorra steps forward, watching Flynn as he pulls out strands of the lightcycle’s code in his hands, examining them closely and altering and replacing them at random intervals.

“And I know he has my lightcycle identified.” He pauses, his hands full of glowing blue-white code, and glances up at Quorra. “It got me in a little trouble back before. When I was still running around the Grid trying to fix things.” He shakes his head and returns to his work, but keeps speaking as he does so. “So I’m thinking that he’ll be looking for this old thing, too. Which is good for us.”

“You’re not going to go down there… are you?” Quorra asks slowly, hoping that she isn’t jumping to the wrong conclusion again.

Flynn shakes his head once, not looking at her. He’s still absorbed in working with the lightcycle’s code. “I’m thinking,” he says after a short silence, “that I might be able to rig this thing to run on its own power for a little bit. Enough to send it on a straight shot into the city. It wouldn’t last for long, but it’d be long enough to give us a chance.”

Quorra blinks, then looks back down ridge at the road. There are at least ten sentries lining the road into the city; there might be more waiting nearby, or up above in one of the Recognizers trawling across the sky. “Would that be enough to draw them off?”

“If they think it’s me, it might,” Flynn replies. “And this thing’s distinct enough to stick out. Would you be able to get the lightrunner through if it worked?”

She bites her lip. She’s still staring down at the sentries, counting them again, making calculations. _If it works…_ She nods. “I can manage it. It’ll be harder if any of them follow us.”

“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” Flynn says. He lapses into silence then, and Quorra can only watch as he works with the lightcycle’s code, making adjustments and changes as he sees fit, the code a constantly shifting mass of light between his hands.

She alternates between watching him and watching the road into the city, keeping marks on the sentries, counting them and recounting them. They don’t seem to have spotted the lightrunner yet, which is a good sign, since she’s going to need to pull in even closer if Flynn wants a good place to send off the lightcycle decoy. She doesn’t know if his plan will work. He certainly made a good point about the lightcycle—it’s one of the oldest pieces of equipment on the Grid, and its overall design is a stark contrast to the more streamlined designs in common use. It makes sense that Clu would be looking for it; it’s one of the few pieces of code that is uniquely Flynn’s.

She counts the sentries again. Still only about ten of them. How many would take off if Flynn’s lightcycle drove through their lines? Two? Three? _I can’t get past more than four of them._ Clu has made capturing Kevin Flynn a top priority since the days of the Purge, when Flynn first disappeared from the Grid, but how much would sentries care about that? They’ve likely been ordered to hold the gate into the city against intruders, which means she and Flynn won’t have much of a chance even if the decoy works.

It’s the only chance they’ve got, though. The other ways into the city are probably guarded just as closely as this one is. If they can’t get through here, they can’t get through anywhere.

After what feels like an eternity, Flynn makes one last adjustment to the lightcycle’s code, then closes it back into the side of the bike. He collapses the lightcycle down to a baton again with a few quick movements of his hand, then stands. “Let’s see if this works.”

 **ooo ooo ooo**

She brings the lightrunner in closer to the city. The external and internal lights are all off; the only lights the sentries might see are those of her circuitry and Flynn’s, not nearly enough to give them away. The sentries waiting at the gate into the city have not moved. Now that they’re closer, Quorra has gotten a good count of them—there are ten, and the lightcycle needs to draw off at least half of them if they have any chance of entering the city.

They stop near the top of another ridge, and she glances at Flynn. “Is this close enough?”

He nods, then slowly opens the hatch and climbs out. They are almost directly in front of the gate, but out of sight of the sentries, Quorra hopes. She watches Flynn, her hands tight on the steering wheel, her foot almost pushing the brake pedal through the floorboard. She watches as he walks a few strides away from the lightrunner, until he is even with the road leading into the city.

He rezzes up the lightcycle again, and kneels beside it, inputting one last bit of code, Quorra guesses. Then he stands and places a hand on the lightcycle’s side.

It shoots off almost instantly, its engine revving loudly as it speeds over the last smooth plain of rock before the gate and onto the road into the city, right between the two columns of sentries.

Flynn hurries back over, climbs into his seat. The hatch closes automatically once he’s inside, but neither he nor Quorra really notice. They’re staring at the road into the city, at the sentries who just saw Flynn’s lightcycle fly into the city proper.

There’s confusion at first. They’re all aware that _something_ has happened, but none of them seems to know what, and they’re milling around, conferring, until at last, two—no, _three_ of them take off on red lightcycles, following the direct path the lightcycle made into the city.

Quorra eases off the brake pedal a little, edging the lightrunner forward just slightly. It’s something that three of them are gone, but it’s not enough…

They watch. The sentries seem to be settling back into their old positions on the road below, but then another conference takes place between them. Quorra clenches her jaw, watching closely for some sign that their way in will be made even a little easier.

Two more sentries take off on lightcycles, but they don’t follow the road into the city, instead taking the great road that circles the city’s border, following it as it swings northward.

“Probably going to report to someone,” Flynn says quietly. “Can you make it through there?”

Quorra studies the five sentries that remain. Three on one side of the road, two on the other. At the absolute worst, all of them will pursue once the lightrunner enters the city. But they won’t abandon their post completely, either. Two will probably stay behind to guard, which leaves three.

 _I can deal with three,_ Quorra thinks, remembering the lightcycle grid. She smiles. “Yeah. Hold on.”

She puts the lightrunner into gear and turns it to the left, away from the gate. There’s another ridge leading up to the roadway on this side, and she hits it as fast as the lightrunner can manage. It’s enough of a ramp to send them flying as they approach the city gate, engine rumbling loud enough to make the sentries turn.

With practiced ease she hits the switch below the gear shift that switches the lightrunner from all-terrain to Grid mode, and they hit the smooth roadway with a heavy thud. The tires squeal a moment, and then Quorra speeds away, turning right, away from the other sentries.

She doesn’t look to see if they’re being followed, but she sees Flynn glancing behind out of the corner of her eye. “There’s two,” he says, his voice a little strained.

“All right.” She turns the lightrunner off the border road, entering the city proper at last. She can deal with the pursuing lightcycles. The bombs are out of the question now that they’re in the city, but she’s never depended on those to get herself out of a tight spot. It’s just a matter of outmaneuvering the sentries. She flips a switch on the steering wheel to turn on the lightrunner’s trail, then makes a hard right turn as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

There’s a crash and flash of red-orange light. “That’s one,” Flynn says.

Quorra nods, clenching her jaw, then risks a glance to her left. There’s no sign of the other lightcycle that she can see, but it’s back there, there’s no doubting that. She makes a hard left turn, though she’s fairly certain the sentry wouldn’t let himself get caught by the same maneuver that just claimed his partner. It’s worth a shot, at the very least.

Flynn is still keeping lookout for her. “I can’t see the other one.”

“Me neither,” Quorra replies, glancing out her side again. She makes another left turn. The streets in this sector are largely empty; hardy any programs live out here, away from the city’s center, and those that do tend to keep their heads down, avoiding the occasional skirmishes between sentries and dissidents. _Like this one,_ Quorra thinks.

“Do you think he turned back?” she asks.

“It’s possible. Don’t know why he would, though…”

She keeps driving, turning at random, making a labyrinthine trail through the sector. The second lightcycle does not reappear to cut them off or attack in any other manner, which is as reassuring as it is ominous.

“I think he’s gone.”

“Looks that way,” Flynn says slowly.

She stops the lightrunner in the middle of a deserted intersection to get their bearings and switch off the light trail, then turns left and keeps driving.

“Where are we headed?” Flynn asks.

“Downtown,” Quorra replies. “I have an old friend who I think might be able to help us.”


	5. The Mask of Zuse

It can’t be nothing. It _can’t._

Sam Flynn sits in his cell because he can’t stand. He’d rather be pacing, be doing _something_ to give himself an outlet, but he can’t. He’s still sore and shaken up from his meeting with Clu, but he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to pass out now even if he wanted to. Not with that program’s words rattling around in his brain.

Flynn’s lightcycle. Flynn. His father.

It can’t be nothing. Clu wouldn’t have dropped everything for nothing.

Flynn’s lightcycle. He doesn’t want to hope. He shouldn’t. He’d gotten so good at not really caring anymore, and now—he shakes his head. He shouldn’t hope. Not after what Clu told him. _You’ve been okay with Dad being dead for twenty years,_ he thinks. _This isn’t any different._

But it _is_ different. And Sam can’t deny that, in the back of his mind, he’s wanted his father to be alive. He’s wanted his father to somehow drop back into his life, so that things would be okay again. And now, it’s _possible._

But he shouldn’t hope. He shouldn’t. It’ll only make it hurt worse later, when he finds out he was wrong, that his father’s been dead all along. Just because it’s Flynn’s lightcycle entering the city doesn’t mean Flynn is driving it, he tells himself. Not that he really understands how this kind of stuff might work. He remembers the program who tried to save him on the lightcycle grid. It might be him. It might be anyone. It doesn’t have to be Flynn.

It doesn’t have to be Flynn, but he wants it to be.

Sam sighs and shakes his head, leaning back against the cold wall, trying not to think about the pain in his leg and the dull tension in his every muscle. It’s hard to ignore the pain, even with his head full of so many other things at the moment. The gash on his leg hurts the worst. He doesn’t know if it’s stopped bleeding again or not, and he’s too tired now to lean forward and check it out again. Not that he’d be able to do anything about it if it was still bleeding. He doesn’t even have anything he could use as a bandage or tourniquet.

He sighs again, closing his eyes. He wishes he knew what was going on. He wants to know what’s happening outside, if there’s a way home from here. And he wants most of all to know what happened to his father, if he’s still alive or if he really has been dead all these years.

He doesn’t know anything, though, so all he can do is hope, as dangerous as it is. He could be trapped here. His father could be dead. But he doesn’t have anything else to hold onto right now.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


It’s a disheartening shock when Flynn risks a glance behind them and spots in the uneven light the shadow of a lightcycle. The sentry has the lightcycle’s circuitry turned off, but it doesn’t make him invisible, especially now that they’re closer to downtown.

He knows he shouldn’t be surprised. The sentries have always had a rather single-minded devotion to their duty, an attitude that has only intensified under Clu’s reign. He should never have thought that this one would retreat. And now they have to deal with him in the more densely populated sectors near downtown.

Flynn swallows and glances behind them again. The sentry is still there, following them closely, but hanging behind just far enough to make a clean getaway if things get dangerous again. He’s not going to give up the chase.

“We’re being followed,” Flynn says quietly.

Quorra doesn’t look away from the road, but he sees her jaw clench. “The sentry?”

“Yeah. We won’t have a chance if he follows us downtown. He’ll have backup.”

“I know,” she says, nodding. And she knows as well as he does that they can’t start a fight this far into the city, not unless they want to be captured.

She turns right, taking the lightrunner down a narrower street. Flynn says nothing; he’s sure she knows what she’s doing, and it might be better if he doesn’t know what’s going on. He glances over his shoulder again; the sentry is still trailing them.

Quorra turns the lightrunner down a few more streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares in favor of narrow ways that barely give the lightrunner clearance on either side. She doesn’t even look at Flynn as she drives but gazes straight ahead, her expression serious.

And then she turns down an extremely narrow road and brings the lightrunner to a stop.

Flynn turns to her, staring. “Quorra, what--?”

“Do you have Sam’s disc?” she asks as she reaches up to hit the switch that opens the hatch.

“Yeah…”

“I need it.”

Flynn hands the disc to her, still staring, his mind working furiously to figure out what she’s planning to do. He almost asks her, but then hears a step near the lightrunner: the sentry. He turns away from Quorra at once. He’s almost certain Clu knows he’s in the city by now, but he’d still rather not give their position away by being recognized.

“Programs.”

He can’t see what’s going on. The sentry is right alongside them now. _She knows what she’s doing,_ Flynn tells himself. _She’s probably gotten out of tighter scrapes than this._

“You are hereby detained for gaining unlawful entrance to the—“

And then he hears the sound of what can only be Sam’s disc flaring to life, and the sentry’s words die in a garbled electronic static. Quorra puts the lightrunner into gear again, roaring down this narrow street as the hatch closes over them. As they turn out on one of the main roads again, Quorra reaches across and hands Sam’s disc back to him.

He takes it slowly, and manages a smile. “Thanks, Q.”

She glances at him and smiles briefly in return, then keeps driving.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


They reach downtown without drawing any further attention to themselves. There are far more sentries here than anywhere else in the city, Quorra knows, but no one stops them as they walk down the street towards the massive tower in the city’s center that is their destination. She still glances over her shoulder occasionally; she can’t help it. The last time she was this far into the city was during the height of the Purge, when every street was crawling not only with sentries but Clu’s elite Black Guard, all of them searching for the so-called virus that was destroying the city. Searching for Isos. Searching for _her._

After the third or fourth time she looks behind them, Flynn touches her shoulder gently. “You okay, Q?”

She almost glances back again, but stops herself and manages to nod. “Yeah. It’s just… it’s been a while.”

“It’ll be all right,” Flynn says. There is gentle reassurance in his voice, and as she stares at him she feels the tension within her slowly start to unwind. _It’ll be all right._ It’s almost a false reassurance, because they are now closer to danger than they have ever been, but they have to keep going, Quorra tells herself. If she lets her fear overcome her, they will never be able save Sam Flynn.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, and they continue walking.

“Where are we headed, anyway?”

“The End of Line Club,” Quorra replies, dropping her voice as they pass a pair of sentries. “From what I’ve heard it’s supposed to be a neutral ground, even this far in.”

“And your friend will be there?”

She nods. “He should be.”

Flynn doesn’t ask her anything else, but as they reach the base of the tower and step into the elevator, worry starts to rise in the back of her mind. She has neither seen nor spoken to Zuse since the days of the Purge, when he had a hand in helping her escape the more tightly policed sectors of the city. All she knows of him now is what she has heard in rumors on the edges of the city, from the dissidents and revolutionaries. None of those programs ever claimed to have seen him in person; she is even now only running on what she’s heard.

If Zuse is not here, then they can always seek out another avenue, she tells herself. They can take things as they come, like Flynn said. But she wants him to be alive, and as the elevator continues its ascent she allows herself to hope that she will see him again.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


They touch down in a vast intersection in one of the southwest sectors of the city. Word has already reached his master: the lightcycle of Flynn the Creator has been captured by the sentries pursuing it.

But an equally important piece of news has also reached his master: the lightcycle is empty. Neither program nor User piloted it into the city. They have been tricked.

But still his master has come to investigate. And he will be with his master, ready to act, to do whatever must be done to capture Flynn the Creator and bring him at last to justice for the good of the Grid.

The throne ship lands and he follows his master down the steps and into the street below. Three sentries stand waiting, ready to give their report. On the street behind them is the lightcycle of Flynn the Creator, its hatch open and its sides slightly damaged.

He’s seen it before,  
long ago.  
But he does not remember where.

He shakes his head. Another malfunction. They have not been this frequent in many cycles.

He will ignore them for now, though. They are insignificant compared to the task at hand.

His master walks up to the three waiting sentries, his hands clasped behind his back. He follows, and stops just behind him, staring at the sentries.

“What happened?” his master asks.

There is a brief silence, and then one of the sentries speaks.

“It came through the Southwest Gate where we were—“

“I know that.”

The sentry flinches.

He waits, watching his master and the sentries. He waits for a signal that will send him into action. He waits. He watches.

“I want to know what happened _here,_ ” his master says, his voice low.

There is a silence again, but it lasts longer. He waits. His master waits as well, but he knows his master will not wait for long.

“The lightcycle lost power around here,” the same sentry says. “We converged on it and moved to contain Flynn. We—we then discovered no program or User—“

And then in one smooth motion his master pulls out his identity disc and ignites it and derezzes the sentry on the spot. He watches as the program crumbles into lifeless bits of code, and then glances up again, waiting to see what his master will do next. His master stands there, disc still in hand, regarding the two remaining sentries silently.

“Get back to your posts,” his master says quietly.

The two remaining sentries say nothing, but immediately walk away, following orders. He watches them go and glances briefly at his master, waiting to see if any orders will be issued. But his master says nothing else, and after a moment he extinguishes his disc and returns it to the mount on his back.

His master walks forward, towards the lightcycle of Flynn the Creator. He follows closely, saying nothing as always, waiting for an order as always. He looks at the lightcycle as his master kneels before it—

_The lights of the empty arena only make it gleam brighter.  
The man beside the lightcycle beams.  
“Not bad, eh, Tron?”_

He freezes as the voice shoots through his memory. He cannot place it. It sounds familiar somehow, but he cannot place it.

And there is that name again. Tron. He searches the banks of his memory once more for this “Tron.” His search turns up nothing, nothing but this glitch, this knot of bad code now playing itself over and over again in his mind. He tries to trace it to its origins, but it only turns back on itself, going back to the lightcycle before him and back to the lightcycle pristine in the arena and that _voice_ , why does he know that _voice_?

He shakes his head again, trying to dispel the memory. It is a glitch, and nothing more. He does not know where it came from, but that is unimportant. He will ask his master, later, to eliminate the memory from his code. For now he will ignore it, for it is irrelevant to the task at hand.

His master is still examining the lightcycle of Flynn the Creator. He stands nearby, watching as his master runs his hands over the lightcycle’s surface, calling up bits of its code and studying them.

They are there in the intersection a long time as his master works. He watches and waits, ready to move if his master should give him an order.

But he is given no orders. After some time his master pulls out his identity disc and the lightcycle of Flynn the Creator. It derezzes almost instantly, its code breaking apart and crumbling into nothing on the street.

_“Fastest thing on the Grid,” he says, grinning.  
“You wanna have a go?”_

He’s seen it before,  
long ago.  
But he can’t remember where.

He shakes his head again, trying to dispel the—glitch, the glitch. It is not—it cannot be a memory. It is corrupted code, and nothing more.

His master walks past him, back towards the throne ship. “Let’s go.”

He is only a little slow in following. He returns to the ship with his master, ready as ever to follow orders.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


The End of Line Club isn’t very crowded—it’s a little early yet—but Quorra has never felt more achingly out of place. She walks slowly around the room, glancing at the programs dancing and socializing, recognizing no one. Flynn trails her silently, an almost menacing presence behind her with the dark hood of his cloak pulled up. The music thumps loudly from the booth overlooking the whole room, but when Quorra glances up she finds she doesn’t even recognize the DJs anymore.

It’s been so long since the last time she was here. So much has changed.

She’s almost ready to give up, to tell Flynn that they ought to go, when a program’s voice interrupts her thoughts.

“Can I help you?”

She turns, and standing just a few feet away from them is a female program dressed all in white. Her circuitry glows a very pale blue, almost white like the rest of her, and she is regarding them with a serious expression.

“We’re looking for someone,” Quorra answers slowly.

The program smiles. “That’s what I thought. Is there anyone you’re looking for specifically?” Her voice has a harsh edge to it, and for a moment Quorra hesitates. She doesn’t know if they can trust her, but she’s the only chance they might have.

“We’re looking for the program called Zuse,” she says quietly. “I heard he still operated from here.”

The program is still smiling. “You heard right. Follow me. I’m Gem, by the way.” She walks slowly through the crowd around the bar, and Quorra and Flynn can only follow her. Quorra hopes this isn’t a mistake. They can still leave at this point; no one has recognized Flynn, they could leave just as quietly as they came in.

“You’ll have to talk to Castor first,” Gem says as she leads them to one of the couch-lined nooks in the back of the club.

“Who’s Castor?” Quorra asks.

“Zuse’s secretary. If you want to meet with Zuse, you have to go through him.”

Quorra nods. _This can’t be good._ There’s still a chance to turn around, she tells herself as Gem walks up another white-clad program currently chatting with a few others over a drink. She whispers something in the program’s ear, and he turns around at once, towards them.

Quorra has to stifle her surprise. The program isn’t some anonymous secretary—it’s _Zuse._ For half a second he looks as surprised as she feels, but he recovers very quickly, his expression of shock transforming at once into an amiable smile. Gem is standing at his side. “This is Castor,” she says. “And these are—“

“Quorra.” She sees Zuse nod just a little, and she’s almost glad for that small sign of recognition. There are some things you just don’t forget, no matter what happens in between…

“Ram,” Flynn says in a low voice that is rather unlike his own. Quorra glances at him a moment, then looks back at Zuse, who is still smiling at them warmly.

“It is a pleasure,” he says, bowing low, sweeping one arm out in a grand gesture. “Now, then, Quorra and Ram, what can Castor do for you?”

“We… were hoping we could speak with Zuse,” Quorra says slowly. _He has to be doing this for a reason._

“Well, as I am sure my dear Gem has told you, no program speaks to Zuse without first speaking to me. What is it you think Zuse can help you with?”

“It’s not something we can discuss openly.” She can only hope her nervousness and still lingering shock aren’t showing on her face. _I know who you are,_ she thinks, _and you know it._ “Where can we speak with Zuse?”

He’s still smiling broadly at them, but she sees, or thinks she sees, a flicker of _something_ in his eyes. Hesitation, resignation, something. “Perhaps this is a discussion best had behind closed doors, then? If you’ll follow me…” He walks around them, reentering the main floor of the club, Gem still at his side.

Quorra exchanges a glance with Flynn, then follows them both back to the front entrance, where Zuse taps his translucent cane twice on the floor. A suspended staircase rises out of the floor, leading the way to an open room that overlooks the whole of the club. “My private lounge,” Zuse says. “I hope this is sufficient enough for our interview?”

“I—yes.”

He gestures up the staircase with one hand. “After you, then.”

Quorra starts up the staircase, Flynn following close behind her. She glances back at Zuse, though, who has turned to Gem, and she pauses when he leans in to say something to her. “Take care of the, ah, the pleasantries, won’t you? I’m afraid this might take a while.”

 _This was a mistake._ The thought crosses her mind in a flash, and it only repeats itself when Gem suddenly meets Quorra’s eyes. She turns away, and continues up the staircase to the lounge at the top, knowing that Flynn heard what she heard as well, and aware that Zuse is hurrying up after them.

 _This was a mistake,_ she thinks again, and she doesn’t know why. She watches as Zuse enters the lounge behind her and Flynn, trying to push down the sudden feeling of dread that’s risen in the back of her mind.

Zuse wastes no time once they’re all past the soundproof barrier that serves as one wall of the lounge. He grins at her, shaking his head. “Quorra, Quorra, Quorra,” he says, sauntering past them and making his way to the small bar at the back of the room. “Where have you _been_? I thought for certain you’d been—“

“I wasn’t,” Quorra replies. “I’ve… I’ve been surviving.”

“I can see that.” He props his cane up against the bar and reaches underneath, pulling out three glasses and arranging them in a row on the counter before him. “As have I. My apologies for the subterfuge,” he continues, pulling a decanter of liquid energy off one of the shelves beside him. “Zuse is a dangerous program to be these days, I’m sure you understand. Almost as dangerous as being an Iso, though I won’t conflate our… dilemmas any further.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Quorra manages to smile. Maybe this wasn’t a mistake. Maybe that moment of fear was just an overreaction, her mind jumping to the wrong conclusions again. The dread she felt before starts slowly to fade. “It’s—it’s nice to see you again.”

“Lovely to see you again as well, my dear girl.” He smiles, glancing up for a moment from the drink he’s preparing. “If you don’t mind my asking—I do pride myself on staying in the know on these sorts of things—where _have_ you been all this time?”

“In hiding,” she says firmly. She hopes her tone will put an end to that question, but Zuse plows on.

“Yes, but _where_ , that’s the real question.” He’s still smiling, and she doesn’t like the quality his expression has taken on. “Almost eight hundred cycles since I saw you last, and you’ve managed to stay alive and away from the sentries, the Black Guard, and Clu. A lot programs the Grid over would kill to know how you’ve managed _that_.”

“That’s not your concern.”

Quorra jumps a little at the sound of Flynn’s voice. She’d almost forgotten he was standing there behind her, but she’s immediately grateful that he’s stepped in.

The smile vanishes briefly from Zuse’s face, but it returns almost at once, a bit more sincere, a few degrees less unsettling. “My apologies,” he says, bowing his head a little. “Your business is your own, as it’s always been.”

“It’s—it’s all right,” Quorra says.

“Course it is. Now then,” Zuse says, pouring out equal measures of energy into each of the three glasses before him, “you have come to see me for a reason, haven’t you? What is it I can do for you?” He grins, setting the decanter of energy aside, and smoothly pushes two of the glasses forward, towards her and Flynn.

“You’ve heard about the User who entered the system?” Quorra steps forward and takes one of the drinks. Flynn follows her lead after a moment.

Zuse takes a sip from his drink. “I do try to stay well-informed. And only a dolt of a program could miss the Portal burning bright above the Outlands. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about who this User is?”

She hesitates for a moment, glancing at Flynn. His face is still largely shrouded in the hood of his cloak, but he is almost expressionless. She returns her gaze to Zuse, then nods. “I’ve heard.”

“The son of Flynn,” Zuse says, grinning widely. “And the first User the Grid’s seen in almost a thousand cycles. Such a pity he’s in the clutches of Clu.”

“We’re hoping to change that,” Quorra says quietly.

The smile fades completely from Zuse’s face. “You’re not serious.”

Quorra nods. “We are. I thought you might know where we could start looking.”

There is a brief silence. Zuse is still staring at her, eyebrows raised. “Well,” he says, setting his drink down on the bar, “I don’t know much, but I do know you’re not likely to come out of this alive either way. Either of you,” he adds, glancing sidelong at Flynn.

“That’s not important,” Quorra says. “Do you know where we could start looking?”

“Clu doesn’t keep prisoners, not often.”

“He wouldn’t kill a User.” Quorra sets her drink down on the bar and meets Zuse’s eyes.

He glances away from her for a moment, then meets her eyes in turn. “I’ve heard rumors say that he killed Flynn all those cycles ago. That all this business about finding him once and for all is smoke and mirrors to keep the dissidents hoping ‘til he can track them all down.” His expression has grown dark, but he has not once looked away from Quorra. “So I wouldn’t put it past him to kill your son of Flynn as well.”

Quorra has to swallow a more pointed response, and she stops herself from glancing at Flynn, who has remained stoic and silent for much of this conversation. “There are just as many rumors that say Flynn’s in hiding.”

“That there are,” Zuse says quietly. “I will give you that.”

“So it’s possible Clu’s keeping the User alive to try and draw Flynn out.”

Zuse nods. “I will give you that as well.”

“So. Do you know where we could start looking?”

“Well,” Zuse says, grabbing his cane and walking back around the bar, “as I said, Clu doesn’t keep prisoners, not often. Almost not at all since the Purge ended. But, if he were to keep a prisoner, I would wager that said prisoner would be held at the system administration tower.”

Quorra nods, but says nothing. The sys admin tower is in another part of downtown, and it is a place she was hoping they would be able to avoid. It’s the heart of Clu’s power in the city, the headquarters for the sentries and the Black Guard, the home of Clu’s extensive security network. And it’s probably the most dangerous place for her and Flynn to be right now.

“Of course,” Zuse continues, “if he’s not keeping the User at his headquarters, he’s keeping him even closer—on his throne ship. I’m sure you’ve seen it buzzing around overhead.” He’s almost subdued at this point, no smile coming readily to his face as it so often has before. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Quorra?”

“Yes,” she replies. “I’m sure. Thank you.”

“Not at all,” he says, and there’s that smile again. “Now then. I’m sure you’re both in a terrible hurry, but how about a fresh drink all around?” He hurries back around the bar and gathers up the drinks they barely touched in the first place.

Quorra and Flynn exchange a glance, and Quorra has to fight down her uneasiness again. “I don’t think—“ Quorra begins, but Zuse interrupts her.

“Please,” he says, smiling widely. “I insist.”

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


He thought he was ready. He was wrong. It’s not a fatal mistake, he tells himself as he paces, glancing occasionally out the window at the city spread out below the throne ship. It’s not a fatal mistake, not yet. A further report from the southwest gate indicated that Flynn might have entered the city after all: that off-Grid vehicle that appeared on the lightcycle gird earlier made a run at the gate after the lightcycle decoy had gone through.

Flynn has to be involved somehow, he tells himself. No program could have altered the lightcycle’s code to make it run on its own power. Not even he could do something like that—only a User, only _Flynn_ could do it.

And here he’d thought he’d have the upper hand after a thousand cycles of stalemate. It never occurred to him that Flynn might have been preparing as well, waiting just as he has been waiting for the opportunity to strike.

But he has the advantage. He has the sheer force necessary to track Flynn down and capture him. And he is the one with the biggest advantage over Flynn. He has the trump card that can win the game: the boy Sam Flynn.

He made mistakes, but he can recover from them. He has everything he needs to win this game. He just needs to move more carefully in the future. He can do that. He has everything he needs. It’s just a matter of using it correctly.

The door behind him hisses open. He stops pacing and turns to see Jarvis entering the room. He turns back to the window and glances over the city again. “What is it?” he asks.

Jarvis pauses, and clears his throat. “We—I think we have some good news, sir.”

A pause. There’s nothing to say. He waits.

“The data from the sentries that pursued the off-Grid vehicle has been fully recovered. Both sentries were derezzed, but—we were also able to recover where the sentries were derezzed. One of them was derezzed near the southwest gate, likely the work of the off-Grid vehicle—“

“Get to the point,” he says quietly.

Another moment of silence. He waits.

“The second sentry was derezzed in a sparsely populated sector near the downtown area. The security agents studying the data believe this to be the work of the off-Grid vehicle as well.”

“And?”

“I—we know where they are now, sir. I’ll—I’ll have sentries canvass the downtown area as soon as the order can be sent out.”

He says nothing in response. Something in the city skyline has caught his attention. The vast skyscraper that rises from the city’s center has lit up from top to bottom. He narrows his eyes, recalling at once the carefully arranged agreement he has set up with Zuse, the program who runs the End of Line.

He smiles a little. Zuse has something for him. A very important something, if he’s right.

“Don’t bother with the sentries,” he says to Jarvis.

“Sir?”

“We’re going to the End of Line.”


	6. The Trap

_Something’s not right here._ Flynn watches as the program Zuse needlessly whips together another round of drinks. The ones he prepared before are still sitting on the bar, largely untouched over the course of Quorra’s conversation with him. He’s also talking at a fair pace now to Quorra, and Flynn would be paying attention but for the uneasiness rising slowly in the back of his mind.

They need to leave, but Zuse is speaking so quickly that Quorra can barely manage to get a word in edgewise. Flynn is starting to consider stepping in, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t want to draw further attention to himself, especially to a program as “well-informed” as Zuse claims to be. He wonders briefly who some of those informers are, and his mind makes a sudden uncomfortable leap in logic.

 _Something’s not right here._

He glances at Quorra, who looks almost as uneasy as he does, and then back to Zuse, who is still prattling on about something that happened to him cycles ago. He’s still in the middle of mixing those drinks, too, three empty, untouched glasses sitting in front of him on the bar.

He isn’t an old friend trying to catch up on times gone by. He’s stalling them, and this is and has always been a trap.

“Thank you, but we need to go,” Flynn says clearly and firmly, cutting across Zuse without hesitation. Zuse actually stops speaking, and stares at him in shock or annoyance, Flynn doesn’t care to parse which. He motions to Quorra and turns away from the bar. “Come on, Q.”

Quorra hesitates for just a moment, glancing between him and Zuse, but she follows him as he makes his way across the room to the opening that looks out on the rest of the club.

But Zuse follows him too, and Flynn stops when the program catches his arm with the crook of his cane.

He doesn’t fight, doesn’t push the cane away. Not yet. He just stops, and turns back to look at Zuse.

The ready smile is gone from Zuse’s face. He glares at Flynn, and Flynn can see out of the corner of his eye that Quorra has suddenly tensed, one hand dropped to her side, fingers lightly touching the baton strapped to her thigh.

“Not so fast,” Zuse says. “Either of you.” His eyes dart briefly to Quorra, who is frozen almost like a statue, but he looks back to Flynn when he speaks next. “Especially you. Flynn.”

 _I shouldn’t have come,_ Flynn thinks at once. _Goddammit, I shouldn’t have come._

“It was very clever of you, using a fake name,” Zuse says, the corner of his mouth curling up into a derisive sneer. “I should know, it’s worked wonders for me the last few hundred cycles. But honestly, Flynn… did you think you wouldn’t be recognized? Even though you’ve changed it’s still obvious you’re the Creator. At least to anyone with a bit of sense, and I pride myself that I’m not as primitive as _that_.”

“I take it Clu’s coming?” Flynn asks slowly. It’s the obvious answer, yes, but he’s certain Clu would never let a program as knowledgeable and slippery as Zuse run around the Grid unchecked. And from what little he’s seen of Zuse, he’s almost equally certain that the program would never sacrifice himself to protect his various clients and informants, not with bigger and better deals waiting in the wings.

“Looks like you’ve got more than a bit of sense as well,” Zuse says. “Yes, he’s coming. And he’ll be very pleased to see you _both_ , I should think.”

At this Quorra inhales sharply. Flynn looks at her, and his breath catches in his throat when he sees her expression. She is staring at Zuse in shock, her eyebrows drawn together fearfully and her mouth half open, as though she was about to speak but lost the words before she could form them.

Zuse glances at her, and for a moment he looks uneasy, unsettled. But it’s only for a moment, and as he glances away again, his expression hardens. “I’m sorry, Quorra, but things have changed. For both of us.”

For a few seconds, Quorra is still shocked, but then her expression shifts into a dark scowl so fierce that it surprises even Flynn. “Things have changed,” she says quietly.

“And we’re not staying,” Flynn says, twisting his arm around to catch the shaft of Clu’s cane in his hand. They don’t have a lot of time to spare, he knows, but leaving the club is as simple as going down the stairs and making a run for the elevator. At least, it’s simple if Clu isn’t here already.

 _Just take things as they come_ , he thinks.

Zuse tries to wrench the cane out his grasp, but Flynn holds on tightly. Without even trying he can feel the code running beneath his fingers and his palm, giving the cane structure, form, function. It’s a more complicated piece of code than it appears, he realizes after a moment, but breaking it is as easy as turning his wrist and pulling downwards.

The cane snaps instantly in two, the piece in Flynn’s hand derezzing at once into tiny bits of broken code, tumbling with a clatter to the floor. The half in Zuse’s hand is more stable, but as he backs away Flynn can see it starting to derezz, bits of code slowly dying and falling off to the floor.

Zuse stares at him in shock for a moment, his eyes dropping to the remains of the cane on the floor and then darting back to Flynn. “He’s probably on his way here right now,” he says, grinning, but even Flynn can tell he’s not certain.

“And we’re on our way out,” Flynn says, giving Zuse one last glance before he turns to the vast window looking out over the club. Quorra’s already at his side, holding her baton in one hand and her disc in the other, but still glaring darkly at Zuse.

There’s no readily apparent way to call up the stairs, but that’s a problem easily solved. Flynn drops to one knee and puts his hand to the floor, with a couple taps of his fingers calling up the code for the entire club. It’s not a particularly smart thing to do at the moment, but with Clu coming he doesn’t have time to play things safe.

His eyes scan the code quickly as he searches, almost frantically, for the marker that controls the staircase up to the lounge. He doesn’t look up at Quorra, or even think to glance over his shoulder at Zuse, until the scream and crash of a disc makes him jump and turn around, eyes wide, his heart beating about a mile a minute.

Quorra’s standing directly behind him now, her disc ignited and her light sword shining at her side. Beyond her he can see Zuse, still clutching the slowly derezzing remains of his cane as he stares at Quorra, now looking almost distraught, for on the floor between them is his disc, spinning in a pathetic circle before it finally tips over, hitting the floor with a dull clank.

“You’re not going to hurt him,” Quorra says. “I won’t let you.”

For a moment, there’s silence, and Flynn has to force himself to turn around and continue digging through the code; they don’t have time to dawdle, not now. Line after line after line of code rolls under his fingers, and he can sense in an almost instinctive way what each line does—that one controls the lights on the dance floor, this one the sound files the DJs manipulate. As easy as it would be to just shut everything off, something he could do without even calling up the code visually like he has, he keeps looking, trying not to glance over his shoulder at Quorra and Zuse, trying to push aside the worrisome knowledge that Clu is on his way here, right now, and that if they don’t get out now, it’s over.

Finally, after what seems like an age, he finds the code that controls the stairs, and with a simple tap of his finger he activates it, and closes out the rest. “Quorra, come on!” he says, getting to his feet, and the stairs spring up before them, and they rush down. Quorra’s still holding her disc and sword, and several of the club’s patrons stare at them as they reenter the club proper.

The stairs block the way to the elevator. Flynn shakes his head, and though he knows it’s a mistake he does it anyway: he draws one hand along the length of one of the steps, and at once they all derezz, bits of dead code raining to the club floor.

The club falls silent, but Flynn doesn’t even care to look around. He hurries forward, Quorra still following him closely, heading for their one route of escape: the elevator at the end of the foyer. Even the enormous bouncers looming at the club’s entrance don’t make to stop him. He can hear the hushed chatter of the programs behind him, the whispers of his name, of “User,” of “the Creator.”

And then he sees, through the elevator doors and the glass of the elevator itself, something that blasts the whispers from his mind.

Clu’s throne ship is approaching, making to dock at the only entrance into the End of Line.

For just a moment, Flynn stops. _Oh, no. No._ The ship is at some distance yet, but he can see, standing at the ship’s clear docking doors, a stocky program in black and orange.

Clu.

No. Flynn runs to the door, which thankfully opens without his having to do anything. The doors close behind him and Quorra and he turns to the control panel and hits the lowest number he can see. The elevator goes all the way down to the city’s sub-levels, but he doesn’t care. They can make their way back up to the street level from there if they have to.

As the elevator starts to descend he looks out the window again, and he’s almost certain he can see Clu staring at him, scowling from the throne ship. This is the closest they’ve been in over a thousand cycles.

And then he’s gone, and the elevator is still making its way down the tower, away from the club, away from Clu. They’ve escaped. This time.

“I—I’m sorry, Flynn, I shouldn’t have—“ Quorra begins, her voice shaking.

“It’s not your fault,” Flynn says at once. He opens a bit of code on the elevator wall, and makes a quick alteration to make sure they’re not stopped before they reach the bottom. “You couldn’t have known.”

He glances at her for the first time since they left the club. She’s put away her sword and disc, and she’s bowing her head, not looking at him. Not for the first time, he doesn’t know what to say. He sighs and shakes his head, questions without answers all darting around his mind, almost taunting him. What have they gotten into?

After a short silence, Quorra voices one of his internal questions. “What do we do now?”

“Get back to the lightrunner,” Flynn says. “And… get to the sys admin tower.” It could very well be another trap, but it’s the only real lead they’ve got. “It’s worth a look if nothing else. And hopefully Clu will be busy for a little while.”

Quorra nods, and they spend the rest of the elevator ride in a tense, uneasy silence.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


Not even a minute has passed in the End of Line Club, and the questions are still being whispered back and forth in disbelief.

Did you see it? Did you see him? Did you see what he did?

Was it him? Was it really him? It can’t have been him.

I heard he was dead.

I heard he was in the Outlands.

Why is he here? I thought he was dead.

Maybe he’s not dead. You’ve never seen a program do that, have you?

Programs _can’t_ do that, bit-brain, it has to be him.

But why is he here? Why did he come here?

Is he back? Is he back once and for all?

Did you see what he did? A program can’t do that.

Yeah, _we get it_ , you can shut up about that now. But why was he here?

It has to have been him, it can’t be anyone else.

Flynn, they whisper. The Creator. He’s back. It can’t be anyone else.

The End of Line is neutral ground. The believers talk rapidly with programs loyal to Clu, and even the loyalists can’t believe what just happened.

Flynn. The Creator. _He’s back._

After a while the DJs, who are just as shocked as the rest of them, put a beat back on the sound system, but even the music is subdued. Programs are still chatting in disbelief, some of them (mostly believers) hurrying forward to examine the mess of code Flynn left behind him when he destroyed Castor’s stairs. There’s no sign of Castor up above, which is unsettling for some programs, but what happens next is even more unsettling.

There’s a loud creak and a crash at the club’s front door. A few programs turn, and then the doors open and silence falls over them all over again as Clu himself storms into the club, flanked by the infamous Rinzler and a handful of Black Guard.

He walks right past the bouncers in the lobby and stops at the entrance of the club, glancing around the room with narrowed eyes. No one speaks, no one moves, not even those programs kneeling by the code that Flynn touched. The music from the DJs’ booth tapers off into nothing but an occasional, ominous bass, each pound of the beat seeming to wind the tension up even further.

And then a voice breaks through the silence.

“Ah, Your Excellency!” Castor cries, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, strolling around the bar with a nonchalance that doesn’t fit the atmosphere. Only a few programs turn to watch him as he makes his way to the front of the room, where Clu stands waiting, scowling. Castor sketches a low bow, and straightens up with a wide grin. “To what do we owe this remarkable pleasure?”

The silence is almost taut now; the DJs’ beat rolls on in the background, marking the time between Castor’s question and Clu’s terrifying lack of response. Still, none of the programs make a move; they all watch, hoping that this will not go wrong somehow.

And then Clu smiles just a little, and matches Castor’s nonchalance when he opens his mouth to speak. “I was in the mood for a drink,” he says.

“Well, you have come to the right place, sir!” Castor replies, still beaming. “Why not come up to my private lounge? I’ll serve you myself, it’s the only kind of hospitality our excellent leader deserves. We’ll have to go up the, uh, back way, I’m afraid,” he adds, and his smile falters a little bit. “We’ve had a bit of a... malfunction with the stairs.”

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Clu says, still smiling that small smile. He gestures ahead with one hand. “Lead the way.”

“Of course. If you’ll follow me…” He turns and takes his path back around the bar, Clu following him, but Rinzler and the three Black Guards stay behind. Even after Clu and Castor have left the club floor, the uneasy silence remains. A few murmurs of conversation break out here and there, and the DJs start up a new beat from their booth, but no one, not even the loyalists, quite has the nerve to relax.

They all try to return their attention to their drinks and their friends, but every program still glances up occasionally at Castor’s balcony lounge, wondering what Clu could possibly want at the End of Line.

“You let him get away.” He doesn’t even wait until they reach the lounge to start in on Zuse; they’re in the narrow back stairwell that leads upstairs, away from the club and its various patrons. He can still see in his mind’s eye the figure in the elevator, that dark hooded figure who stared at him as he stared back. He never saw the program’s face, but he felt it in the heart of his own code: it was Flynn.

Zuse pauses a moment and glances back at Clu, scowling. “I’m well aware.” He hurries up the last few steps and opens the door to the lounge. “But he was here, and if you need any more proof than the mess downstairs you can have a look at this.” He grabs something off the bar and tosses it to Clu, who catches it in one hand.

He recognizes the object after a moment: it’s the remains of Zuse’s cane, slowly derezzing from one end. He looks over it and then back at Zuse. “And?”

“I had that made to be unbreakable, save under considerable external distress,” Zuse says a little stiffly as he goes behind the bar. “He snapped it half like it was made of glass.”

“And whose fault was that?”

Zuse grins for the first time since they left the club proper. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he says. “You’re trying to find an excuse to kill me.”

Clu scowls. “It’s crossed my mind.”

“And I don’t blame you,” Zuse continues. “After all, you have got your reputation to think of, but so have I. And I will point out, in case you’ve forgotten, that all those programs down there think that _this_ is the safest place out of all the places in all the sectors of the Grid. They’re only mostly right, of course, but what if they don’t see my face again? They’ll think they were wrong, and they won’t be so quick to trust whatever puppet you set up to replace me.

“So,” he concludes, “you’re thinking of killing me. But if you did that, it would be a dreadful mistake. For more reasons than one, too.”

“Really.”

Zuse grins again. “Yes. Y’see, I know a couple things you don’t know.” He puts a glass on the bar in front of him and pulls a small decanter of energy from the shelf to his left. “For one, our dear old friend Flynn is not traveling alone. He’s got a girl with him, a program.” He pauses, his sense of theatrics getting the better of him as he fills the glass with energy. At the right moment, just as the glass fills, he glances up at Clu significantly. “The last of the Isos.”

Clu’s grip on the remains of the cane tightens. “What else?”

“The other thing,” Zuse continues, pulling out another decanter of energy and adding a small measure to the mix in front of him, “is that I know exactly where they’re going to be headed.”

He grins and holds the drink out to Clu. “I’ll tell you where if you let me live. You know you need me here anyway. I’ve got a meeting with some charming revolutionaries later tonight, and, as I said, it’ll be better for us both in the long run.

“Besides,” he adds, “it’s a small price to pay for the capture of the great and powerful Flynn, don’t you think?”

 ****  


ooo ooo ooo

Quorra parks the lightrunner in an alleyway about five blocks from the sys admin tower. It’s as close as she’s comfortable getting, especially after what happened at the End of Line. She saw the throne ship approaching as well as Flynn did, and she’s still surprised that they weren’t pursued by sentries all the way here. Maybe Flynn was right, and Clu is taking his time at the club.

And maybe he isn’t, which means they need to hurry.

She climbs out of the lightrunner slowly, gazing through the gaps in the buildings at the tall, dark monolith of the sys admin tower. She’d never hung around this part of downtown very often back before, and after the Purge began her life depended on getting away from the heart of Clu’s power as quickly as possible. But now she’s back, and this is the closest to the tower she’s been in her whole life on the Grid.

She glances at Flynn, who is still sitting in the lightrunner, but staring up at the tower just as she was. “Flynn?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then he seems to remember himself, and turns to her. “Yeah?”

“Do we have a plan?” she asks.

He sighs and shakes his head. “Not really. We don’t even know if Sam—“ He breaks off and shakes his head again. “I don’t want to draw any more attention to ourselves if I can help it, especially if Clu’s going to be on our trail soon. Quorra, I hate to ask you to—risk yourself like this, but… is there any way you can get into the tower without being noticed?”

“I—I don’t know. I’ve never even been near it before.”

“I can give you a map of the basic layout,” he says, and he steps out of the lightrunner and puts one hand to the alley wall. There’s a brief flash of blue-white light, and Quorra glances anxiously at the either end of the alleyway; they’re close enough to the sys admin tower that any undue attention would mean the end of them. But the streets are quiet, and there are no passerby to spot Flynn creating a map on the alley wall.

“Every floor should be the same as far as layout goes.” The tower is the shape of a long rectangle, and Flynn sketches out a set of hallways that circle the walls and bisect each floor along the middle. “There are elevators here and here,” he continues, indicating the left and right sides of his floor plan, “so keep that in mind if you need to get away in a hurry. I’ll see if I can write an override code for you, in case you need it.”

As he speaks, Quorra slowly makes her way around the lightrunner, studying the diagram carefully as Flynn refines it. She won’t be able to take this with her when she goes in; she’ll have to know every exit, every place to escape, and even that might not be enough.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much more than this,” Flynn says as he finishes the diagram and pulls his hand away from the wall. The map remains glowing on the dark surface of the wall, and Flynn looks over it again and sighs. “I imagine Clu’s repurposed most of it, so I don’t even know where you might start looking.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Quorra says, glancing at him. She tries to smile, to reassure him that they _can_ find Sam, but she falters when she sees the despair creeping across his face. “I—Flynn.”

He looks at her.

“I’ll figure it out,” she says again. “I promise.”

He smiles at her, but it’s a sad sort of smile. The despair is still there, in his eyes, and there’s nothing she can do to get rid of it.

No. There is something she can do. She can save Sam Flynn. _Remember that._

“Thank you, Quorra,” he says. He lets out a long breath, then turns back to the wall. “All right. Let’s see about that override.” With a tap of his finger the first line of code appears on the wall, and Quorra watches as he does what no program can do: create something out of nothing. She’s seen him do it before, of course, but it never fails to fascinate her, seeing how he draws code in from the ether, making it functional, giving it form. She can read some of the lines that fly under his fingers, but then again all programs can. She’ll even be able to operate this piece of code when Flynn finishes it, but only Flynn, only the Users, can change it.

It doesn’t take him very long to write the code, and when he’s done he pulls it away from the wall and condenses it into a flat, hexagonal disk. He turns it over in his hand a moment, then gives it Quorra. “That should be enough to make one of the elevators run without being stopped.”

“Thank you,” Quorra says. She grips the disk tightly, then glances back at the tower. Nothing much has changed since they got here, and she wonders if Clu is even following them.

“One more thing,” Flynn says. She looks back at him. “Give me your disc.”

She blinks. “Why?”

He’s smiling a little. “I was thinking it might help a little if you blended in with the local color. It’s just a cosmetic change,” he says a bit more seriously, “nothing major, I promise.”

“All right.” Slowly she unhooks her disc and hands it over to him, and she can’t help but watch uneasily as he opens it and accesses _her_ code. She trusts him, yes, but her disc is her _self_ , all of her code right down to those odd, unknowable qualities that make her an Iso. And she’s heard stories, rumors, about how even Clu’s lowest sentries are given access to search a program’s disc if they see fit, to dig through a program’s memories and experiences, looking for signs of dissidence, defiance.

But then it’s over, and Flynn closes the disc and hands it back to her. He sees her expression, though, and he steps forward to touch her shoulder gently. “I—I’m trying to make sure you stay alive, Quorra,” he says quietly.

“I know,” she replies faintly. Quorra stares at her disc, which is the same save for one small change: its inner ring has turned the same shade of orange-red that marks every sentry and intelligence program that works for Clu. This must be what Flynn meant by “local color.” She reaches back and hooks the disc back on its mount, which allows the changes to sync. She doesn’t watch, but she can feel it happen, feel her circuitry flicker and fade slowly to red, making her look like any other program under the employ of Clu.

She looks back up at Flynn and clenches her jaw. “I’ll find Sam,” she says. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” Flynn says. “But, Quorra—if he’s not there, come back. We’ll come up with another plan if we have to.”

Quorra nods, but says nothing. She knows Flynn is looking out for her safety, for her life, but is she really that important? Sam Flynn is a User; he’s Flynn’s son. And she’s already failed him—failed them both—once. She’s not going to fail again, not if she can help it.

She turns back to the lightrunner, and ducks back into the cockpit. Flynn left Sam’s disc sitting on the floorboard; she picks it up and turns back to Flynn, smiling. “I’ll give this to him when I find him,” she says.

Flynn smiles. “Good luck, Q.”

She nods firmly, then reaches up and hits the trigger on her collar that activates her helmet. The less that’s seen of her, the better. She nods at Flynn again, then turns and walks out of the alleyway, towards the sys admin tower and hopefully Sam Flynn.

  
**ooo ooo ooo**   


Sam is still lost in his own thoughts, trying and failing to rationalize his hopes away. He’s also trying and failing to ignore the twinges of pain still radiating from the gash on his leg, and the general aches and discomfort spread out across the rest of him. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Rinzler dragged him back to his cell. He does know that the ship has stopped twice, briefly both times, and he wonders where they might be going next.

Clu can’t have forgotten about him. Can he? Or… no. Sam sighs, shaking his head. He has no idea what’s going on outside the cramped confines of his cell. He doesn’t know if Flynn’s lightcycle was bearing Flynn or just some other program. He doesn’t know if Clu caught whoever it was. He doesn’t know why the ship stopped a second time, and, as always, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.

But then the ship jolts and shakes for the third time since Sam was brought aboard. Sam jolts and shakes along with it, muttering a few creative curses under his breath as his injuries all throb with renewed enthusiasm. The shaking stops after a moment, and Sam glances around. It’s a subtle thing to notice, but he’s fairly certain that the ship has stopped again.

Something else has changed, too, he realizes after a moment. The guard whose black-helmeted head usually obscures the cell door’s tiny window is gone. Sam stares at the empty space for a moment, then jumps (and winces as his injuries all throb with fresh pain) when the door suddenly hisses open.

He doesn’t even have time to look up before two firm hands grab his arms and drag him to his feet and out of the cell, not even bothering to let him get his footing. Sam clenches his jaw and stifles another string of invective as the wound on his leg twists, threatening to reopen for the second time. He has to struggle against the guards a little, but he finally manages to get his weight on his good leg, just in time for them to push him roughly forward and twist his arms behind his back. There’s a loud click and Sam feels something close around his wrists.

He has to fight an absurd urge to laugh. _Handcuffs? Seriously?_ After everything he’s seen tonight, it almost seems _too_ ordinary.

The impulse subsides as the guards march him forward. They have to have taken him out of his cell for a reason. And the last time they dragged him out… _Shit._ He hobbles along between them, trying despite their pace to keep his injured leg from being agitated further. They’re not taking him to the same room as before, though, he realizes. This is the way they brought him in after Rinzler almost killed him, back at the arena.

They go through the door and bring Sam to almost the exact spot as before, but this time they don’t step away from him, instead remaining just behind him, flanking him on either side.

Clu’s standing in the same spot he was before, too. He’s smiling, but Sam knows better than to even think about feeling relieved. Something’s going on. He doesn’t know what it is, but he gets the feeling he’s about to find out.

“What do you want?” Sam asks.

“There are a lot of things I want, Sam,” Clu says quietly. “And you’re going to help me get them.” He steps forward, still smiling, and for the first time Sam notices that the transparent door behind Clu has opened, revealing a brightly lit corridor in white. He stares at it, eyebrows furrowed, and for a moment he forgets even to glare at Clu. _What’s going on?_

“I’ve got a little mission for you,” Clu continues, stopping a few feet away from Sam. He motions with one hand, and Sam looks around to see Rinzler stepping down from one of the daises to stand beside Clu. “And you’re going to help whether you like it or not.”

He steps aside then, allowing Rinzler to take his place directly in front of Sam. Though he can’t see the program’s face, Sam can _feel_ his glare, and the proximity of his constant, low-pitched growl only makes Sam feel even more uncomfortable. Rinzler says nothing, though, and merely turns and strides forward, towards the door and the white corridor. After a moment, the guards take a fresh grip on Sam’s arms and follow him.

They enter the white corridor in silence, and Sam has no choice but to go along with them, still as confused and in the dark as ever.


	7. The Hornet's Nest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me preface this by saying that I am _profoundly sorry_ that it has taken so long for me to update this. I was having some trouble with this chapter to start with, and then I got distracted, and then I spent most of my previous semester at school dealing with some difficult personal issues. I'm not entirely on top of things now, but I'm doing better.
> 
> I'm going to try and keep up with updates on this, hopefully once every couple of months. I'm currently in my last semester of university, so that needs a great deal of my attention, and I of course need to keep writing.
> 
> Thanks in advance for understanding.

The streets surrounding the sys admin tower are silent as Quorra approaches, and it is the silence that bothers her the most. Even at a time like this—no, especially at a time like this, with the Portal open and rumors of Users spreading rapidly through the city—there should be sentries patrolling the streets, guarding the sys admin tower, reminding every program that passes of the extent of Clu’s power.

But the streets here are silent and empty, and even as she approaches the hulking, faceless monolith of the sys admin tower she sees no one and nothing.

This isn’t right. Clu has thousands of sentries at his disposal. He would never be so arrogant as to believe that the seat and center of his power could go unguarded, even for a millicycle. The streets here must be empty for a reason.

He’s been expecting them.

For a moment, only for a moment, Quorra wants to go back. He must be there, she thinks as she stares up at the blank, empty blackness of the tower. He must be there, waiting for her, waiting to capture or kill her and then spread out his net in search of Flynn. They could be waiting inside the doors, they could be waiting out of sight just ahead, they could be waiting anywhere, waiting for her to come close enough before they leap out and overtake her.

But she can’t go back. Or rather, she can, but she won’t. Not now. Flynn is depending on her, and more importantly, Sam Flynn needs her. If Clu is here already, then that means Sam Flynn is here as well. She can still save him.

She takes a moment to recompose herself, squaring her shoulders with the tower, then sets off again, walking with firm purpose this time. If Clu is going to capture her, then let him. Let him do it as she walks with her head held high.

**ooo ooo ooo**

The trap is set. All he has to do is wait. It’s been so long, so very long, and now he is closer to his ultimate triumph than he’s ever dreamed. All he has to do is wait, and Flynn and the Iso will come to him.

Rinzler and the boy Sam Flynn have been dispatched to the fifty-seventh floor to wait for whoever is coming. The bait waiting to be taken and the trap waiting to spring, all together in one place. He smiles. Oh, what’d he give to see Flynn fall into the trap, to see Flynn’s reaction to his two greatest victories: the capture of Sam Flynn and the death of Tron. Flynn's greatest failures and his greatest victories, and even those will pale compared to what he’s going to accomplish tonight.

“Sir.”

Jarvis’ voice snaps him back to reality. “What?”

“Sir, a program has entered the building at street level. He’s requesting admittance to the tower proper. The desk clerk is requesting a yes or no before proceeding.”

“Open a visual channel to the lobby,” he says quietly.

They comply immediately, and a video image appears on the glass before him, showing him the program in question. He—no, she stands at the clerk’s workstation, holding a second disc in addition to the one on her back. She wears a helmet with an opaque visor, and that is what gives her away. He recognizes the shape almost at once. She’s the driver from the lightcycle grid, Flynn’s little lackey. The Iso girl.

He grins. Everything is falling into place. “Let her through. And direct her to floor fifty-seven.”

“Yessir.”

He waits and watches as the Iso enters one of the elevators. It’s a disappointment that Flynn isn’t with her, but he’ll be easy enough to track down once they’ve captured her.

“Sir? She—she’s ignoring the directive, sir, she’s headed for floor fifty.”

For just a moment, his grin fades. She’s smarter than he thought she’d be. Still, he thinks, grinning again, it’s not as though his trap can’t be moved. He taps the control panel on his chair and opens up an audio channel.

“Rinzler. The Iso is on floor fifty. Intercept and neutralize.”

**ooo ooo ooo**

Sam Flynn doesn’t know what’s going on, which unfortunately doesn’t make much of a change from the last few hours. It’s been about twenty minutes since he was dragged off Clu’s ship, and for most of that they’ve been standing in a nondescript hallway, Sam stuck between the two sentries while Rinzler stands in front of him, waiting.

But then they start moving again, and Sam almost has to hop to keep pace with the sentries pulling him along by the arms. The gash on his leg hurts more than even since he’s been standing and walking on it for so long, but he doubts they’d let him sit down and have a rest if he asked for it. So he hobbles along between them, ignoring the pain as best he can, glaring at the back of Rinzler’s head as their little group heads down the hallway, back to the elevator they’d taken to get here in the first place.

Sam frowns, blinking as Rinzler hits the button next to the elevator and the doors silently open to admit them. For a moment, he wonders if they’re going back to Clu, if the trap he’d been trying to set up has failed.

The elevator slides downwards, though, and Sam can only sigh and wonder what the hell’s going to happen to him next.

They only go down a handful of floors, and the doors open on a hallway identical to the one above, brightly lit and silent and deserted. Rinzler leads the way down the hall, but there’s something about the program’s deliberate pace that makes Sam nervous. Why have they come down here? He sighs again, shaking his head. He hates this, this waiting, this _not knowing._ It’s like he’s walking blindfolded to the edge of a cliff, taking every step with held breath, living constantly with the possibility that the next moment will be his last one. He’s been living like this for the last three hours, and he’s not sure how much more of it he can take.

They turn a corner, and then come to a halt.

Standing at the far end of the hallway is another red-circuited program. He—no, wait, _she_ —doesn’t move, but regards them silently, her helmeted head unmoving. After a moment, Sam notices she’s holding a disc in her left hand. This strikes him as odd for some reason, but before he can think about it further, Rinzler steps forward, pulling his discs off his back and igniting them in unison.

The program moves forward in response, igniting the disc in her hand and then, to Sam’s surprise, reaching over her shoulder to pull a second disc from the mount on her back. _What the hell?_ For a moment, only a moment, Sam is both confused and fascinated. But then Rinzler rushes forward, and the program takes a defensive stance, and a single realization blots out everything else: they’re about to fight, and if he’s not careful he could end up in the crossfire.

As their discs clash with a loud and harsh metallic buzz, Sam reaches his next decision: he’s getting out of here. The thought had crossed his mind after leaving Clu’s ship, but he knew then that trying anything with Rinzler around would only get him more roughed up than he already was. Rinzler’s busy now, though, and the sentries still gripping his arms don’t seem to be all that interested in keeping him secure or even getting him away from the fight. The elevator’s a bit of a walk from here, but—Sam glances between the sentries, his mind racing. If he can at least knock these guys out, he might be able to make it to the elevator, in spite of his injured leg. Just so long as that other program keeps Rinzler busy…

This is it, then. Sam casts another furtive glance between the sentries, then throws himself as hard as he can to the right.

Sam and the sentry hit the ground with a thud that makes Sam wince as fresh pain washes over his various injuries. There’s no time to pause and recover, though, not if he wants to get out of here alive. He grits his teeth and rolls over to keep the first sentry pinned beneath him, then kicks out as the second one approaches, catching him behind the legs and knocking him to the ground as well.

It’s then that he realizes he’s in trouble. The second sentry is already getting back to his feet, and Sam’s not doing all that great a job keeping the first one pinned down. Another well-placed kick knocks the second sentry down again, but at the cost of losing some ground to the one beneath him, who’s now on the verge of pushing Sam off and getting up himself.

 _Shit shit shit—_ There’s no time to worry about the second sentry, not now. Sam braces his feet on the floor and then pushes himself and the sentry still half-under him back towards the wall with as much force as he can manage. The sentry hits the wall with a metallic crunch that makes Sam wince, but it’s just enough to make him stop struggling to stand up.

Which, Sam realizes with an exasperated sigh, is exactly what the other sentry is trying to do. With a bit of work from his still cuffed arms, Sam manages to push himself into a sitting position as the sentry across from him rises to his knees and starts to stand.

He never gets to his feet, however, because out of the melee at the far end of the hall a disc comes screaming, flying through the sentry’s chest like a hot knife through butter and embedding itself in the floor while the sentry staggers and slowly falls apart.

Sam stares open-mouthed at the disc and the sentry’s remains, then glances down the hall to see the female program still fighting with Rinzler. She only wields one disc now, one disc and something Sam immediately thinks is a lightsaber. Rinzler matches her blow for blow, and Sam realizes after a moment that she’s losing. She can’t hold her ground, and with each blow Rinzler is forcing her closer and closer to the wall. 

A low moan behind him brings Sam back to his own problems. The sentry’s recovering. Sam glances over his shoulder, and when he turns back, his gaze falls on the disc still humming and stuck in the floor. _Well, it’s better than nothing._ He moves across the floor to where the disc is and, after taking a moment to position himself, uses its edge to cut through his handcuffs. He’s grateful at once to have full use of his arms back, but less than enthused by the new stiffness in his shoulders.

That’s the least of his concerns, though; the sentry is already getting to his feet. Without another thought, Sam grabs the disc behind him and yanks it out of the floor, then hurries over to the opposite wall and pulls himself to his feet. His leg still hurts, and so does the rest of him, but the way his heart’s pounding, he’s pretty sure he’s running on adrenaline right now. He can ignore the pain if he has to, at least for a little while.

The sentry has straightened up and pulled out his disc. Sam glares at him for a moment, then throws himself forward, ready to fight—to win—to _escape_ —no matter what it takes.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Rinzler. She should have known Rinzler would be here, and she should have guessed Clu would bring the trap to her if she avoided it.

Quorra holds her ground against Rinzler, but only barely. She sacrificed precious seconds to throw Sam Flynn his disc, to help him against the sentries. She’s wielding her sword and disc together now, fighting as she has long preferred, but all her skill is useless in the face of Rinzler. He parries her every attack effortlessly, and strikes back at her with a relentless fury, breaking through her every defense, pushing her back a half step, and another half step, moving her inch by inch to the back wall. Cornering her, trapping her.

But she has to keep fighting. She _promised_. Sam Flynn is doing well enough against the remaining sentry—he might even be winning—but he won’t stand a chance if Rinzler turns on him. She has to keep fighting, for Sam’s sake if nothing else. She’s already failed him once and she’s not going to let it happen again.

She can’t hold her own against Rinzler forever, though. Her focus is slipping, she’s losing energy—and Rinzler is just stronger than her, in the same way he’s stronger than every single program on the Grid. No program has ever defeated him on the games grid, and only a handful of programs have faced him in actual battle and lived to tell about it.

It suddenly seems inevitable: she is going to lose, and all this will have been for nothing.

She raises her disc and sword in unison to ward off another blow from Rinzler. Energy crackles and arcs from their weapons, white hot and blinding. Behind him, she can see Sam overpowering the sentry, fighting, _winning_. She can hold Rinzler off, she thinks. She has to—

Something slips. Her sword falters, her disc gives way, something, she doesn’t know what—she doesn’t know anything anymore, for in this moment Rinzler’s discs are coming towards her and she cannot move fast enough, for this is the end, the end she has feared since the Purge began is finally coming to meet her, and she has failed, she has failed—

And then Rinzler moves faster than her eyes can follow, and suddenly she’s on the floor, and he is staring down at her. He turns away, and Quorra can only watch in dazed horror as he advances on Sam Flynn.

**ooo ooo ooo**

The Iso lies prone on the floor, and he knows she will not rise again if she hopes to live. He turns away from her. Across the hall he can see the User Sam Flynn struggling to stand. He is still injured and weak, and despite the disc in his hand he will be easy to recapture.

He approaches the User, discs still humming in his hands. He has seen this many times before, a program struggling to stand as he approaches, whether it is on the games grid or on the streets of the city. They fear him, all of them. They fear him because they fear the power of his master, the power that has brought this system to its fullest potential. He sees that fear now in the eyes of Sam Flynn, and he knows that the User will not escape.

The User tries to stand, but his injured leg gives way beneath him and he falls. He sees blood seep from the wound to the floor—

Users bleed.

\--and he has to pause, for the thought has suddenly lodged itself in his mind, and he cannot make himself ignore it. He shakes his head, then looks again at the User, who still stares fearfully up at him.

“Stay where you are,” he says, and his voice is almost a growl, for he so rarely needs to speak. But he cannot focus now—something has gone wrong—so he will speak, and the User will obey.

And the User does obey. He does not move, but continues staring up at him. His expression has changed, though, to something he cannot identify. It is not fear.

Then what is it?

No. No. It is unimportant, insignificant—

“Alan?”

_“Alan?”  
“Where did you learn that name?”  
“Well, that’s your name, isn’t it?”  
“Alan_1 is the name of my User.”_

Alan_1

Alan_1  
my User

_I fight—_

Alan_1 my User

_\--I fight for the—_

Users bleed.

Alan_1  
 _“—we could make this a free system—“_

Alan_1  
my User  
oh, my User

_I fight—  
I fight—  
I FIGHT—_

He staggers, dropping one disc and then the other, his mind reeling, his thoughts scattered, he cannot focus even on the User—

Alan_1  
my User  
oh my User

\--who now edges away from him, escaping.

This cannot be corruption. His master would not allow such corruption to run so deeply in his own code. But if it is not corruption or malfunction, then what is it?

Alan_1  
 _I fight—_

Alan_1. He cannot place the name, and yet he feels he knows it, and yet he does not know it, _and yet_ —

my User

He cannot move. He cannot focus. The User is moving away from him, escaping, and he knows he should be moving to stop him, to recapture him as his master would desire, but he cannot move. He cannot think.

It is as though that single word from the User has immobilized him, and even when the Iso attacks him from behind he does not move to retaliate but falls and watches and she helps the User to his feet and they run out of his sight.

He has let them escape.

He has failed his master.

No.

Wait.

Unfamiliar names and unplaceable memories dance through his mind, and he hears himself speak without knowing why. His voice is not a growl this time, but low and clear, and the sound of it makes him shudder with—sorrow.

Sorrow. Sorrow.

Why does he feel sorrow?

“Alan_1, I have failed you.”

The words repeat themselves in his mind, and it is a long time before he can bring himself to stand again.

**ooo ooo ooo**

It’s going wrong. How can it be going wrong? He stares at the screen before him, not wanting to believe his eyes, but knowing that he must. Rinzler has failed him for the first time in a thousand cycles. And the boy Sam Flynn and Flynn’s little lackey are escaping.

“Stop them! Now! Lock down the building!”

Jarvis and the other programs don’t even hesitate. They scurry into action, and he gives them only a cursory glance before he returns his gaze to the screen and the visual link to the fiftieth floor, where Rinzler kneels unmoving amid the remains of the two sentries, his discs on the floor in front of him. Sam Flynn and the Iso have already made it to the elevator, but the lockdown should stop them. He still has the upper hand, he tells himself. He can still win this game.

“I—sir?”

He doesn’t even turn when Jarvis speaks. “What?” His voice is a low growl.

“We—the elevator with the User—we can’t stop it.”

He turns then, getting up, fighting the urge to reach for his disc. “What do you mean, you can’t stop it? I have admin privileges for the entire Grid—“

“There’s been an override code applied to the elevator, sir,” Jarvis says. “We—we’re currently trying to get past it, sir, but it’s, uh, it’s looking to be impossible—“

He doesn’t say anything. An override code would have to be something new, and no program on the Grid can write new code. Only Users can, and he already knows that something like that would be far beyond the ability of Sam Flynn. He fairly doubts the boy even knows what kind of power he has here.

So the code is Flynn’s, overriding his power for the first time in a thousand cycles.

He glances back at the videoscreen, where Rinzler remains immobile on the fiftieth floor.

This can’t be happening. He had planned it all so carefully.

He’s about to order Jarvis to seal off the building, to prevent their ever making it past the lobby, when another thought occurs to him. He can still win this game. He still has the sentries and the Black Guard at his disposal, all throughout this building and outside it as well. And if the Iso has a code from Kevin Flynn, then the Creator himself must be nearby.

The corner of his mouth curls up in a smile. He can still win. And they’re going to help him do it.

“Let them leave the building,” he says quietly.

“I—sir?”

“Let them leave the building,” he repeats. “And send… three complements of the Black Guard to the main road out front. Tell them to get ready for a chase.”

 _You think you’ve won,_ he thinks. _But you’re going to cause your own downfall again, Flynn. Just as you deserve._

**ooo ooo ooo**

Sam Flynn collapses against the elevator wall as the doors slide shut and they start to descend. He has to struggle to keep his feet; the gash on his leg is throbbing now, sending long twinges of pain up and down his leg every time he so much as breathes. The rest of him isn’t feeling all that great, either, he realizes as he relaxes his grip on the disc in his hand. It goes out, and as he looks at it, he catches sight of his leg.

This is the first time he’s actually been able to get a proper look at it, and what he sees by the elevator’s bright, clear lights makes his stomach turn. The light, tough material of his suit has been completely cut away to reveal the wound beneath, an open, yellowish-red weal that looks burned and raw at the same time. It’s no longer bleeding, but that’s a small comfort, because it hasn’t really scabbed over, either. He can see where the blood has trickled down his leg, drying in the grooves of his armor and even on the bright lines of glowing circuitry. The wound itself glistens in the elevator lights, and when he lightly touches it (wincing at the pain for his trouble), his fingers come away sticky, covered in old blood.

Sam curses under his breath, and when he looks up he sees the other program watching him, her face still hidden behind that opaque helmet. “What?” he snaps.

She doesn’t reply, only turns her head to the side in curiosity, reminding Sam for half a second of his dog. The aching memory burns away as another wave of pain radiates up and down his leg, though, and Sam clenches his teeth. He’s done with this.

“Who are you?” he asks, straightening up as best he can, using one arm to brace himself against the elevator wall. He shifts his grip on the disc in his other hand, and it buzzes to life again. “And what the hell is going on?”

For a moment, the program doesn’t move, but then, very slowly, she raises one hand and touches the back of her helmet. There’s a loud click, followed by several more quiet ones as the helmet comes apart and folds away, revealing a pale, wide-eyed face framed by closely cropped black hair.

“My name is Quorra,” she says. “I’m a friend, Sam Flynn, and if you want to get out of here alive, you’re going to have to trust me.” As she speaks she meets his glare with a level, clear-eyed expression that almost catches him off-guard.

He tightens his hold on the disc. “Why?”

She swallows. “I can’t tell you. If Clu captures us it could mean the end of everything, so it’s better if you don’t know right now. I—I’m sorry.”

Sam almost wants to protest, but the look on Quorra’s face is so heartfelt—almost guilty, he thinks—that he shakes his head. “Fine. Fine, whatever.” By this point, he’s almost used to it. “So how are we getting out of here?”

“I don’t know,” Quorra replies, turning to the elevator doors. “We’re safe for right now.” She points out a hexagonal disc he’d noticed her slapping over the control panel. It’s glowing a bright blue-white color, and as Sam stares at it, he feels, for a moment, strangely comforted. “That’s an override code that even Clu can’t get through,” she explains, “so we’ll make it to the first floor, but after that…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what might be waiting for us.”

“Great. I—great.” He shakes his head again, runs a hand through his hair. “So—so we’ve basically broken out just to get captured again.”

Quorra doesn’t even try to hide her worry. “Maybe.” She glances at the elevator control panel—they’re on floor twenty-eight now, getting ever closer to the first floor and probably recapture. Sam can’t believe this. Not just _this_ , he thinks. All of this. This whole damn night, which has just been one thing after another after another after another, with no end in sight.

He almost wishes it was a dream, because then he could wake up. He knows it’s not, but the thought lurks in the back of his mind, a wild wish for this wild night.

Quorra looks back at him. She takes a deep breath, and after a moment the worry and uncertainty on her face seems to collect itself and fade away. “I will get you out of here alive, Sam Flynn,” she says, speaking clearly, almost as though she’s making a declaration. “I promise.”

And he believes her. Part of him doesn’t want to—he doesn’t even know who she _is_ , for God’s sake—but then he remembers what she did for him during the fight. The disc, the only reason he made it out at all, is still thrumming in his hand. He changes his grip, and it goes out again, and he holds it out to her. “Thanks,” he says. “For back there.”

She stares at the disc a moment, then reaches out and pushes it back towards him. “It’s yours,” she replies, turning back to the control panel as she speaks. She spares him only a quick glance. “From—from the lightcycle grid.”

Sam blinks. “What?” He glances between the disc and her, trying to figure out the connection. How could she have gotten it? Clu had thrown it to the program in the buggy, hadn’t he? But then—wait.

Quorra isn’t looking at him, but even in profile he can see that flicker of guilt sneaking across her face.

“ _You_ were the one—“

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. She still won’t look at him. “I—I tried to get there in time, I did. But I didn’t—“ She breaks off.

He doesn’t know what to say. For a moment, a brief moment, he wants to be angry. He thinks about all the _shit_ he’s been through tonight, and the thought that it might have all gone differently, that he might be safe or at least uninjured right now if it weren’t for a simple matter of timing, is enough to nearly send him over the edge.

But he glances back at her face, so serious, and tinged so slightly with guilt. And he gets the feeling that she wishes as much as he does that it had all turned out differently.

“It’s—it’s all right,” he says, letting out a deep breath. “You can’t change what’s already happened.” He manages half a smile. It feels like the first time he’s even so much as grinned tonight.

She looks at him then, and she almost smiles—and then her eyes widen in shock. “Oh.”

“What?”

She steps forward, and to Sam’s great surprise reaches down for his uninjured leg. He darts back (a move he immediately regrets for the cascade of pain that it sends down his bad leg), but Quorra hasn’t even touched him. She’s pulled something off his leg, and when she holds it up, he’s almost shocked to see it.

It’s a spare lightcycle baton, the one he’d tried to pass off to that other program back on the games grid. He’d forgotten he even had it, and staring at it now, he’s surprised it wasn’t taken off him when Clu detained him.

Quorra glances over her shoulder at the elevator display again, and Sam follows her gaze. Floor six. They’ll be at the bottom soon, and the lightcycle baton she’s still holding between them might be their only way out of this. She looks back at Sam, her eyes wide, all the shadows of guilt in her face replaced by fierce determination. “You survived on the lightcycle grid,” she said. “Against Clu.”

“Yeah…” He’s not sure where she’s going with this. 

She holds the baton back out to him. “If we can make it out of the building, you need to use this. You survived on the lightcycle grid, you can make it through the city.”

Sam’s about to take the baton back from her when the elevator slows to a stop. A low beep sounds somewhere, and Sam watches as the doors silently slide open to reveal—nothing. 

The vast room beyond the doors is, as far as Sam can see, empty. He peers through the doorway, still leaning against the elevator wall, and even from this poor vantage point he can’t see anything, not even a single sentry. Quorra leans out the door herself and glances around, and when she turns back to him, her face is troubled but still calmly determined.

“It’s empty,” she says quietly. 

“That’s… not good, is it?”

She shakes her head. “Clu would never let us leave this easily.”

They stand there in silence for what feels like an eternity. Sam tries to keep his balance against the wall, tries to ignore the pain in his leg, and tries most of all to avoid thinking about what’s going to happen to him next. Quorra doesn’t look at him. She stares through the open doors into the lobby, her expression still calm, still determined.

She then, quite suddenly, pulls her disc off her back and ignites it. Without a word she turns to the elevator’s control panel and attacks the pale blue disc she put there fifty floors ago, though it feels to Sam like that was ages ago. The disc disintegrates instantly, and Quorra stares at it as it falls apart, her breathing slow and even. Her disc goes out and she turns back to Sam and holds it out with the lightcycle baton.

“You need to take these,” she says calmly. “They’re probably waiting for us outside, and you need to get away from here as quickly as possible.”

He stares at the disc and the baton in disbelief, then looks back up at her. “What—what about you?”

“I’ll hold them off for you.”

He doesn’t know what to say for a moment. He doesn’t even know who she is, and she’s sacrificing herself for him. It’s not right, he thinks. It shouldn’t—it shouldn’t be like this. She helped him, for god’s sake—

He stands up a bit straighter, ignoring the pain in his leg as best as he can. “Come with me.”

She shakes her head. “No. You need to get out of here as quickly as possible, Sam Flynn.”

“No!” He’s tired of this, of not getting a say in what happens to him, and—if he can do something to help _her_ , after she’s helped him already tonight, then—fine. “You can ride double with me, it’ll be fine, we can both make it out of here. You don’t have to get yourself killed for me, all right?”

She sets her jaw then, and steps forward, pushing her disc and the baton into his chest. She’s almost as tall as he is, and she stares directly into his eyes, her expression now harder and more determined than ever. “If Clu captures us, he will be able to get the information he needs to escape through the Portal to your world. I can hold off whatever force is waiting for us outside so you can escape, and if you escape with my disc, then it won’t matter if I’m captured. You survived on the lightcycle grid, Sam Flynn. You can make it through the city.”

“And where the hell am I supposed to go?” he asks.

“Turn left as we leave the building, and take the fifth road on your right. He’ll be waiting for you on the left, you won’t miss him.”

Sam blinks. “Who?”

Quorra falters then, and she opens her mouth to say something further, but stops herself. “You’ll find out. Now, please, you have to take these. Before Clu loses his patience and sends them in after us.”

He reaches up slowly to close his hands around the second disc and the baton. “What about you, how are you going to hold them off?”

She pulls another baton off her leg and holds it up. “I’ve got this,” she replies, a grim smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Now come on.”

Sam hooks his disc to the mount on his back and holds hers loosely in his hand, with the lightcycle baton gripped tightly in the other. They leave the elevator together, Quorra supporting him when he stumbles on the short walk to the vast black doors that lead out of this place. They stop in front of them, and Quorra glances at him. “Ready?”

He hooks her disc awkwardly around his elbow and adjusts his grip on the baton. “Just about.”

She gives him a small smile, and they step forward to open the doors and exit at last into the vast city.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Quorra spares only a moment to make sure Sam Flynn goes on his way. He staggers forward, his injured leg buckling beneath him, and cracks open the lightcycle baton. The lightcycle that materializes beneath him is thankfully undamaged, and he takes off just as Quorra turns, her sword igniting, to meet the forces Clu has assembled to recapture them.

It’s three full complements of the Black Guard, all of them armed to the teeth, and several of them already taking off to pursue Sam Flynn. She’s still exhausted from the fight with Rinzler, but she makes herself fight now, matching blows, breaking defenses, destroying every guard she can get close enough to. She snatches a disc from one in the middle of the tussle and uses it in her own defense, fighting the way she’s been taught, and fighting as well as she can under the circumstances.

He should be able to make it, she thinks as she stabs a Black Guard clean through the neck and then turns to catch a blow from another guard with the red rimmed disc in her hand. He should be able to make it to Flynn, and hopefully they will be able to escape. She hopes she has bought them the time they need, for the sake of the whole Grid if nothing else.


	8. A Bitter Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again for the length of time between updates. I am hoping to finally finish this fic sometime this year, but I make no guarantees regarding an update schedule or anything similar. As ever, thank you for your patience and support.

Sam drives.  _You can do this,_ he reminds himself.  _This is your element._   He doesn’t think about how much his leg hurts now that he’s straddling the lightcycle. It’s not that bad, he tries to tell himself.  He thinks about the time he drove his motorcycle to the hospital with  a fractured foot, and he remembers how it hurt like hell and how the hospital staff berated him for it afterwards, but what else was he supposed to do? 

What else is he supposed to do now?  He can’t go back for Quorra.  He’s all too aware of the God knows how many sentries close on his tail, and he’s trying not to think about any of that, because he has to count the streets.

Fifth on the right, she said, and then look for “him” on the left. 

Him.  Who the hell was “him” suppose to be?  And is he even going to stay alive long enough to find out?

He counts.  He’s already passed three streets, and he’s glad now that Quorra noticed he had the lightcycle, because he never would have made it this far on a bad leg.  He’d probably be dead or made prisoner again by now if he’d tried.  There’s still a chance that might happen, though.  He swallows grimly and pushes the lightcycle to go faster.

The fourth street zips by on his right, and Sam glances, just briefly, over his shoulder at the pack behind him.  There are four, maybe five sentries following him on red lightcycles, their smooth black helmets barely glittering in the dim light of the city.  None of them have tried to move in closer, and Sam isn’t sure whether or not he should be reassured by that.

He swings wide into the turn as the fifth street comes up on the right, turning on the light trail behind his lightcycle as he turns.  Maybe he’ll take a few of them out.  That’d certainly be a load of his mind.

He keeps his gaze to the left even as he’s turning.  He doesn’t even know what he’s looking _for_ , but he’s desperately hoping that it’ll be obvious, because he doesn’t want to miss what might be his only chance to escape.  Especially after Quorra insisted on staying behind like that.  He still can’t quite believe she did that, even after what she said about it all being to stop Clu—it was still stupid.  They could have gotten away together.  It might have been awkward, riding double on one of these things, but he still thinks they could have made it.

His thoughts stop short when he spots something on his left, something bright and familiar, and he turns without even thinking about it, turning so hard that as he shoots into the alley the lightcycle slides out from under him.  He rolls on the ground as it crashes into the wall opposite, though it doesn’t explode in the same spectacular fashion that his one on the games grid did.  He stares at it as it slowly starts to fall apart, the seams of cubes appearing along the length of the body.  Then  he sits up and looks at the thing that made him turn in the first place.

It’s the buggy from the lightcycle grid, the one Quorra tried to rescue him in.  Standing beside it is a bulky figure dressed in black, but he can’t make out the face.

“Come on!” the figure shouts, and Sam staggers to his feet, trying to ignore everything.  The tumble off the bike has done nothing good for any of his injuries; his leg throbs worse than ever now, and he feels like he’s bruising in about twelve different places.  But the sentries are still behind him, and if he has to get up and walk five feet to get away from them, he will.

Sam hobbles along the alley wall, putting as little weight on his  bad leg as he can bear, making his way to the buggy and the darkly dressed man who’s already climbed into the driver’s seat.  The door hatch is still open, and Sam falls into the empty seat, the seat he might have taken hours earlier if things hadn’t gone so wrong on the games grid.  The hatch closes at once, and the man in the driver’s seat shifts gears and takes off.

Sam sits up a little, trying to get a look at what’s going on outside the buggy.  He can’t see if the sentries have caught up to them; the buildings on either side of them are going by so quickly that he can’t make anything out.  So he settles his gaze on the man in black, who drives with his eyes firmly on the road.  He’s old, older than anyone Sam’s seen here, with longish gray hair and an impressive beard to match it.

There’s something familiar about him.  Sam can’t place what it is, so he keeps staring, taking in the man’s strange hair, his eyes, everything.

They swing sharply into a turn, and Sam finds himself slammed into the door.  He lets out a low hiss as the gash on his leg shifts again.

The man glances at him then, and speaks.  “Just hold on, Sam.”

And Sam realizes in and instant who this man is, and he can’t believe he didn’t figure it out sooner.  He keeps staring at him, not because he’s curious now, but because he can’t believe his eyes.

“Dad?”

 

**ooo ooo ooo**

 

The moment has passed.

The moment has not passed.

It is still happening.

 _This_ is the moment. 

He shakes his head.  The moment has passed. The word, the name no longer paralyzes him.  He collects his discs from the floor and stands.  He must return to his master.  The User Sam Flynn and the Isomorph have escaped, and he will assist in their recapture.  He must atone for his failure.

_Alan_1, I have failed you._

He shakes his head again, but he cannot dispel the malfunctions.

No.

These are not malfunctions.  He has already concluded this.  These thoughts he cannot trace are not malfunctions or imperfections in his code.  His code has been rewritten and augmented by his master, and his master would not leave such gross imperfections within him.

These thoughts are something else.  Not malfunctions.  Not imperfections.

He must identify them.  He must identify the name.  The names.

He cannot identify the names.  The name Tron.  The name Alan.

These names have power over him, more power than even his master has shown, but he does not know why.

He enters the elevator and awaits the ascension to the top floor, where his master will be waiting for him.  His master will ask him what happened.  His master will ask why he has failed him.

_Alan_1, I am sorry._

_I have failed you._

His master will help him.  His master will eliminate these names.  These names that have such power over him.

 

No. 

No.

As the elevator ascends, he thinks.

The names.  He normally would not consider the names, but after all that has happened since the arrival of the User,

_I fight for_

he finds himself wondering about these names.  Why do they trigger these thoughts?  Why has his master not removed these imperfections before?

Why does he not know these names?

He thinks.

And he thinks that he wants to know what these names are.

It would be betrayal to withhold such information from his master.  But perhaps his master has been withholding information from him.

He wants to know.  What are Tron and Alan?  _Who_ are they?  Why does the mere thought of these names affect him so profoundly, affect him in such a way that he cannot identify?

He wants to know.

And so, as the elevator ascends, he decides.  He will lie.  He will hide these words, these names, from his master, hide them so deeply in his code that his master will not be able to find them.  He will lie to his master, and he will accept the consequences for his failure against the User and the Isomorph.  And he will find out, when the time is right, what these words mean, and why they mean so much to _him._

He pulls out one of his discs, the disc that has always been his, for the other he won in battle, so many cycles ago that he cannot remember—

_“—go!”_

\--where or when, only how.  He stares at his disc and carefully opens it.  He cannot rewrite or alter his own code—he does not have the clearances that his master does.  But he can rearrange it.  He can hide information, bury it in some other part of his self, where his master would not ever think to look.  He will hide the name and the thoughts that have plagued him since he first encountered the User in the arena.  He will not forget them.

And his master will never know.

As he works, hiding the names and the thoughts and the words in the very deepest part of his code, he thinks that he is very fortunate that his master is thinking of other things.  That his master is absorbed in finding Flynn the Creator, and the User Sam Flynn, and the Isomorph.  For if he were not, this plan would not succeed.  His master would do everything to make sure he was functioning properly.

But not now.  His master is too busy thinking of other things.  His master will ask him what is wrong, he knows, and he will have to answer.  His master will likely search his disc, and he will notice the gaps in his memory, gaps that are the only evidence of his work right now, but gaps that his master will take only as some manner of malfunction.  His master will repair what sees as malfunction.

And he will still remember, and he will find the meaning of these names and words and thoughts that have been plaguing him.

He hides it all, still remembering, and when he closes his disc and returns it to the mount on his back, he hopes that his betrayal will not be discovered.

_I fight_

_I fight_

_I fight_

**ooo ooo ooo**

Flynn drives.  He keeps his eyes on the road, sparing only brief glances over his shoulder to track the progress of the pack of lightcycles pursuing them, and briefer glances still to his right, where Sam sits in the passenger seat, clinging to the door handle as they swing through the streets and staring at Flynn in open shock.

It is Sam, he’s certain of that.  He looks just like the image from his disc, but even from his brief glances Flynn can tell that he’s tried and injured.  His expression is pained and pinched, and Flynn can see scrapes and bruises on his face, to say nothing of the large gash cutting through the circuitry on his right leg.  He doesn’t have to guess who the program responsible for Sam’s injuries is.  It would be just like Clu to see how far he could go, to find out just how much a User could take…

Flynn sighs and shifts gears as he guides the lightrunner up a ramp, back to the main level of the city.  They lightcycles aren’t following them very closely, but the mere fact that they’re being followed at all doesn’t bode well.  Clu won’t risk killing them.  He’ll want them captured alive, and after Sam’s escape from the sys admin tower, he’s probably locked down every way out of the city by now.

They’re effectively trapped, but not completely.  If Flynn can think of a way to throw off the sentries behind them, they just might have a chance of making it through this alive.

“Dad.”

He glances over when he hears Sam’s voice; he can’t help it.  Sam’s voice is ragged and low, and when Flynn looks at him he sees the tears running down his cheeks, and he wishes that their reunion hadn’t been like this.

“Dad—“

“I know, Sam,” he replies, his own voice shaking.  He glances at Sam again, but only briefly.  A couple of the lightcycles behind them are gaining.  He takes a deep breath and lets it out as slowly as he can manage.  “It’s good to see you, kiddo,” he adds.

He hears Sam strangle back a sob, and a part of his heart breaks.

It shouldn’t be like this.

“Yeah,” Sam says.  “You too.”

Flynn swings the lightrunner into a sharp turn, which unfortunately isn’t enough to deter the pack of lightcycles still tailing them.  He’s running over the options  to throw them off in his head, and he’s still not sure how they’re going to make it out of this.  He’s not the great hand with vehicles that he was when he started the Grid all those years ago; he’s only going to be able to hold these guys off for so long.

“We can talk once we’re clear of this,” he says, though he doesn’t know when that will be.  “You all right?”  It’s a ridiculous question to ask.  He can see that Sam’s not all right.  But it’s all he can do right now.

“Yeah,” Sam replies, sniffing a little.  “Yeah, mostly.”

For a moment, Flynn doesn’t say anything else.  They’re lying to each other, pretending that this is all right when it isn’t.

Then he asks the question that has been lurking in the back of his mind ever since Sam arrived in the alleyway alone, because he can’t think of anything else to ask and because he wants to know.

“Where’s Quorra?”

Sam hesitates, and that tells Flynn everything before he even speaks.  “She—she stayed behind.”

Flynn doesn’t know what to think.  She could still be alive, he tells himself.  She’s more than capable as a fighter.  Even if Clu doesn’t know she’s an Iso, he would want to detain her for questioning regardless, given her role in freeing Sam.  But if she’s captured, if she’s found out…

“I tried to get her to come with me,” Sam adds, “but she said I had to go without her.  That if Clu captured us both—“  He leaves the sentence hanging, and Flynn glances over to see him shaking something off his arm.  An identity disc, red-rimmed.

“She gave me this, but she didn’t—she didn’t say why.”

He understands now.  He’s sure part of it was to atone for failing to rescue Sam on the lightcycle grid, but in all likelihood she was trying to protect _him._   He’d explained to her several times what might happen if Clu ever captured him and obtained his own disc.  And now, with the Portal still open, still waiting to be used, the situation is direr than it has ever been.

“She would have had to,” he says quietly.  “If Clu had captured her with that, he would have been able to search her memories and find me.  Still…”  He wishes she had come with Sam anyway, but that isn’t going to change their problems in the present.

He turns the lightrunner sharply again, his mind running through the options once more.  He can’t hope to outdrive them.  Even running off the energy from the Grid, there’s no way they can make it outside the city, especially if Cluhas locked down the roads into the Outlands.  So what’s left?

There’s the artillery built into the lightrunner, but even that wouldn’t be enough to get rid of all of them.  That stuff was mostly meant for use in the border sectors of the city and the Outlands; using it this close to downtown would only attract attention from the sentries and the Recognizers on top of whatever forces Clu has pursuing them.

But it’s also the only thing they’ve got at the moment.  And while it might not be enough to throw them off completely, it would at least be enough to distract them for a little while.  Long enough to find somewhere to hide, and maybe long enough to reprogram the lightrunner into another decoy.

But then what?  They’re still too close to downtown, and without any kind of vehicle they’re sitting ducks for the Recognizers.  But time is time, and he wants more than anything else to get Sam to safety.  If they have to, they can find somewhere to hide.

If they absolutely have to, they can wait until the Portal closes.

He hits the button below the gear shift to deploy the bombs before he wastes time thinking about it any longer.  There’s a click from somewhere in the lightrunner’s rear as the bombs roll out, and five seconds later, there’s an explosion of light that makes Sam jump.  Flynn flinches.  A quick glance behind tells him everything he needs to know.  Half the complement of lightcycles seems to have been destroyed, and the rest are mired in the wreckage of the buildings now collapsing and derezzing on the road behind them.

He keeps driving, his eyes peeled for a suitable alleyway even as he accelerates through the streets, determined to get as far away from the explosion site as possible.  Eventually he slows down and brings the buggy to a stop on a mostly abandoned street.  There are a few programs nearer the other end of it, closer to downtown, but they don’t pay the lightrunner any mind.

The hatch swings open with a low hiss, and as he’s getting ready to open the lightrunner’s code on the dashboard, Sam turns to him, confused.  “What are we doing?”

“We can’t get out of the city in this,” he replies, touching the dashboard lightly with three fingers and opening a section of the code.  “Clu probably has it identified by now, and after what happened back at the sys admin tower, he’s probably locked down the city as well.  If we’re lucky, he might think we’ll try to escape in it.”  He’s already thumbing through the code with his other hand, making alterations to the steering and engine capabilities as they occur to him.

He glances at Sam, who is still staring at him in utter disbelief.  As he looks back down at his work, he continues, “I’m changing the code of this thing so it’ll run on autopilot, work as a decoy. It should distract the guards while we find somewhere to hide.”

He works for a few minutes more on the code, instructing the lightrunner to continue in a straight line for as long as it can, then closes it all out.  All it needs is the start command from him, which he’ll deal with after he’s got Sam to safety.  “Come on.”

He climbs out of his side of the lightrunner, and as he’s coming around front to join Sam, he sees him struggling to even stand up properly.  He collapses against the side of the lightrunner, clutching Quorra’s disc tightly in one hand and clenching his teeth in obvious pain.  Flynn stands just a few feet away, watching, not sure if he should even do anything.

“You all right, Sam?” he asks.

Sam turns his way, wincing.  “Yeah, fine,” he replies, his voice strained.  “Just hurt my leg.”

Flynn can see the wound more clearly no, in spite of the poor light from the buildings around them.  It’s a burn from an identity disc, a gash deep enough to destroy the portions of Sam’s suit around it, and deep enough to still be eking blood.  Even just looking at it, Flynn can guess how painful it is.  He’d gotten disc burns himself a few times back before, and even the grazes had hurt like hell for a few hours.  He doesn’t want to imagine how much pain Sam is in right now.

All this goes through his mind as he stares at Sam, still not sure what to do.  Sam returns the stare, but after a moment manages a small, pained smile.  “It’s fine,” he says, and he tries to move forward again, only to falter on his bad leg and stumble backwards, collapsing against the lightrunner once more.

For a moment, Flynn sees a memory.  It’s 1988 or 1987, and Sam’s been riding his bike up and down the road in front of the house while Flynn works on his motorcycle.  It’s late spring, and the weather is perfect, and he’s glad for this moment, away from Encom and away from the Grid.  Just with Sam.

He doesn’t know how it happened, or maybe he doesn’t remember, but Sam loses control of his bike and falls and skins his knee on the pavement.  He screams, and Flynn is already running across the yard and down the road.  He carries Sam back up to the house, and cleans up and patches the knee, because that’s what dads do when moms aren’t around to do it instead.

Flynn doesn’t say anything.  He goes to Sam’s side and puts his arm around Sam’s shoulders as he pulls Sam’s arm around his.  Sam stares at him, but he only smiles a little.  “Come on, kiddo,” he says, and maybe that’s all that needs to be said.

Sam leans into him, and together they walk to the nearby alleyway.  It takes longer than Flynn would ordinarily like, but he doesn’t care.  If Sam needs the time, Flynn will let him take it.  It’s worth every second.

They have to stop just inside the alleyway, because Flynn still needs to send the lightrunner on its way.  He leaves Sam leaning against the alley wall so he can hurry back to the lightrunner and input the last bit of code needed to complete the autopilot programming.  The engine revs loudly for just a moment, and as Flynn steps back, the lightrunner shoots down the road, surprising some of the nearby programs, but otherwise raising no further concerns.  He returns to Sam’s side satisfied, and together they walk further into the alleyway, away from the prying eyes of any curious programs and hopefully away from the sentries as well.

Sam pulls away from him then, gently shrugging off his arm and leaning against the alley wall, letting out a long breath of exhaustion.  Flynn stands beside him a moment, one hand resting on Sam’s shoulder.  Then, on an impulse, he pulls Sam into a hug, wrapping both arms around him and holding him tightly.  He hears Sam inhale sharply and fight back another sob, and he feels the prickling warmth of tears in his own eyes.

He knows he can’t make up for twenty years of not being there.  But he’s going to be here _right now_ , and he has to hope that that will be enough.

He lets Sam go, but keeps one hand on his shoulder as Sam leans back against the wall again, his face streaked with tears.  “It’s good to see you,” he says, his voice shaking more than ever.  “It’s really—“

“I know,” Sam replies, his voice thick.  Another tear runs down his face.  “I know.”

“You should sit down,” Flynn says.  “Rest your leg.”

Sam nods and wipes his face with the back of his free hand, then braces himself against the alley wall and slowly sinks to the ground.  Flynn helps him, or at least tries to, keeping a steady grip on Sams arm as he slides downwards.  He can see the wound on Sam’s leg more clearly than ever now, and it’s almost worse than he’d guessed before.  Sam lets his bad leg stretch out in front of him, but pulls his good leg up a bit, resting his other arm on his knee.  He doesn’t look at Flynn, but rests the back of his head against the wall, his eyes closed, his breath slow and even.

Flynn watches him for a moment, the kneels down on the ground and opens up an overview of this area’s underlying code with one hand.  He’d tried to keep track of the streets while they were being chased, but he wants to make doubly sure of where they are before they even start looking for someplace to hide.  If this area’s too heavily patrolled or readily loyal to Clu, they might have to move elsewhere.  He hopes they get lucky, though, because Sam’s in no condition to go anywhere right now.

“What are you doing?” Sam asks suddenly.  Flynn glances over to see him staring at the bright code under his hands.

“Trying to figure out where we are,” he replies, turning back to the code and scrolling through some of it with one hand.  “It looks like we’re still close to downtown,” he continues, his eyes scanning the lines of code as his hands pass over it.  “Not too close, but…”  He shakes his head.  “Might be a problem.”  He closes the code readout with a quick sweep of his hand; the light vanishes, and the alley is haunted and dark again.

“I—what are we doing?  I mean—how are we—“  Sam stammers and fumbles, and Flynn can tell just from his voice that he’s frustrated and tired and unsure.  He can only imagine how many questions he has, and he wishes they had the time—the leisure—to sit and talk it all out.  But they don’t.  He hasn’t heard any sentries nearby or any Recognizers overhead, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t coming, and if they don’t find a hiding place soon, it could all be over.

He doesn’t say anything, but glances up and down the alley, looking for something, anything, that might be useful.  But the light here is too dim; he can’t see more than about ten feet in either direction, and there isn’t enough light to make out anymore more than the monotonous smoothness of the wall around them.

He opens up the code for this sector again, and this time he scans through it furiously, studying the basic architecture of the buildings around them, looking for a way in from where they are.  This whole city was built to be almost exactly like a city in the User world, so there has to be a back alley door around here somewhere…

It takes him almost three minutes of frenzied work, but he finds it.  There’s a door near the other end of the alleyway, and he’s surprised he didn’t notice it on his earlier scan.  He can’t be sure just looking at the basic code, but it looks like it’s been hidden—encrypted, scrambled, something.  It’s nothing he won’t be able to deal with when they get down there, but it’s still curious, particularly for a sector this close to downtown and the heart of Clu’s power.

“There’s a door on the other end of the alley,” he says, closing out the code and turning to Sam.  “We should be able to get inside, and then—I’ll explain, I promise.”  It’s about the only comfort he can offer right now, and he’s relieved when Sam nods and starts to stand up.  He helps Sam to his feet, and he supports him again as they walk the twenty-five feet or so to the door.

Sam collapses against the wall again but remains standing, and Flynn turns his attentions to the door itself.  It’s been hidden remarkably well, he realizes as he opens up the code for the door itself.  He’s surprised he even managed to find it in the basic code for this part of the sector.  There are at least half a dozen security protocols hiding it from view, from notice, and just as many minor password codes keeping it from being opened.  Of course, it would only take a strong blow from a disc or sword to break most of those codes, but anyone looking for the door would have to find it first.

He’s already taking the security protocols apart when he realizes there is a distinct chance that whatever is waiting for them behind this door might not be pleasant at all.  It seems unlikely that any of Clu’s forces would have use for something like this—why use a hidden door when you’re in control of the entire city?—but from what Quorra’s told him from her various excursions in the city, there are plenty of programs who hate Clu and the Users in equal measure.

They don’t have a choice, though.  It’s this or waiting for Clu’s forces to find them, and he can’t let that happen.  He continues scrolling through the code, unlocking every security code, breezing through every password until at last there’s a low click and the door slides open.

“Come on.”  He helps Sam through first and follows quickly behind, but stops dead as the door closes behind them, for they are surrounded by at least a dozen programs, all of them with discs out and ignited.

 

**ooo ooo ooo**

She’s losing again.

Quorra is surprised she’s still alive at this point, but she hasn’t managed to derezz every Black Guard who’s stepped up to clash with her, and she feels herself growing tired.  Only her determination to keep Sam Flynn alive, to give him and Flynn the time to escape, has kept her going thus far, and now that strength is reaching its end.

She still fights, but she’s losing.  She only manages to block blows, never return them, for with every block she is turning again to protect herself, to raise her stolen disc and sword against the seemingly endless hordes of the Black Guard.  Her earlier fight with Rinzler has tired her, and her initial sparring with the Black Guard has tired her even more.

She cannot keep this up, but she keeps fighting, for she knows that every moment she fights is another moment that this group is not going as one after Flynn and Sam.  Every moment she keeps fighting is a moment they can use to escape, a moment they can use to stop Clu, and perhaps depart at last through the Portal to the User world.

But she cannot keep this up forever.

Her guard breaks.  She blocks a blow with her disc and her sword in unison, and she does not see the Black Guard coming up behind her.  She feels a sharp blow to the back of her neck, a blow that for the briefest moment she believes is meant to kill her.

But there is only pain, no loss of consciousness, none of the freefall feeling of coming apart that she has heard of deresolution.

The blow makes her stagger.  Her arms drop to her sides, and there is another blow to her legs, and the falls to the ground, dropping the disc and her sword.  She shakes, because she is tired and overworked, and she cannot move, though if it is because of the blow to her neck or her exhaustion, she cannot tell.

One of the Black Guard kicks her.  She gasps, and she cannot move.  Why haven’t they killed her yet?  They never hesitated before.  She remembers all too clearly the days of the Purge, when the Black Guard openly prowled the streets, when they would stop any program they pleased, and scan any disc that they pleased, and derezzed without hesitation any dissenting program and every Iso that they encountered.

The Black Guard are not known for their mercy.  So why are they showing her mercy now?

One of them—maybe the same one—kicks her again, forcing her to roll over onto her stomach.  She sees one of them kneel, and he grabs her arms roughly, twisting them behind her back and clasping them together with a bind.  He then grips her arm tightly and pulls her to her feet.  “On your feet,” he says, his voice rough-edged and awful.  She staggers for a moment, but soon finds her balance and walks along as two of the Black Guard escort her down the street, though the carnage she has wrought on their fellows, back to the sys admin tower.

As the faceless monolith of the tower rises up before her once more, Quorra realizes that the Black Guard have not shown her mercy at all.

They are taking her to the tower.

They are taking her to Clu.


	9. Reconciliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. Not a whole lot to say about the fact that I haven't updated in three years, really. It happened. But I'm working on this fic again. I've got the next chapter done already, and I'm hoping to finish the whole thing soon.
> 
> Chapter Ten: Escape from Tron City, will premiere in six weeks, on September 18, 2016.

“Identify yourselves!” The command is rough but clear over the low hum of a dozen different discs. Sam swallows down his nervousness and glances over at his father, unsure what to do. Part of him wants to light up the disc in his hand, Quorra’s disc, because hell if he’s going down again without a fight, but he decides against it. The programs surrounding them don’t look like they’re in a charitable mood right now, and Sam doesn’t want to push what little luck he’s got left. He keeps a firm grip around the disc anyway. Just in case.

“Identify!” the rough voice shouts again. Sam still can’t make out where exactly the voice is coming from, or if it’s even one of the programs in front of them that’s speaking.

Sam glances at his father again, hoping to catch some hint of whatever the hell the plan is, but Flynn’s face is inscrutable as his eyes slowly scan their surroundings. Sam sees him catch sight of something, and then he moves forward half a step and speaks.

“Kevin Flynn.”

He doesn’t raise his voice, but the effect of his words is immediate and palpable. Up until now the programs before them had all be glaring at them fiercely, reminding Sam a bit too much of the programs he’d encountered in the games arena. Now, however, a few of them lower their discs, and almost all of them are staring at Flynn in wide-eyed surprise.

Sam can almost hear the commander hesitate before he speaks again. “Identify yourselves, both of you.” The steely edge to his voice is gone, but at least he still sounds confident, which is more than can be said for his fellows. About a quarter of them have switched their discs off, and Sam sees two even putting their discs away. And none of them have looked away from Flynn.

He hears them whispering, and he catches the murmur of the word “Creator.”

“Kevin Flynn,” his father says again, his tone even and his voice quiet. He catches Sam’s eye then and nods imperceptibly. It takes him a moment, but Sam straightens up and answers as well.

“Sam Flynn.” His voice sounds too loud to his ears, but he can’t resay it now. He swallows, trying to remain calm. He remembers all too clearly what happened the last time he gave his name, and he wonders if things will go any better now that he’s with his father.

Silence follows, and as it stretches on Sam’s nervousness only increases. A few of the programs in front of them raise their discs again, but they seem half-hearted and unsure about it.

_That makes two of us,_ Sam thinks grimly. Part of him wants to turn tail and run, but the rest of him wouldn’t even think about leaving his father behind. And it’s not like he could get very far on his leg, which hurts worse than ever now that he’s been standing and walking on it for a while. He takes a deep breath and tries to look composed, but he’s almost certain he’s not doing a great job at it.

“Stand down,” the commander says. Those programs who hadn’t already done so of their own accord let their discs drop to their sides, and the group parts haphazardly in two as a tall, dark-skinned program approaches, flanked on either side by two programs who look just as tough and hardened as he does.

His face, however, makes him instantly more memorable than any of the others. The right side of his face is dominated by a long, ugly mark that Sam can only think of as a scar, though it does not look remotely healed. It starts at his forehead and continues over his right eye and down the side of his face, ending near his chin. When the commander stops to stand imposingly before them, Sam can even make out the rough, cubed edges of the scar. For all that it is held together with dark staples like stitches, it still looks as though his whole face is threatening to fall apart.

The commander acts as though the scar doesn’t even bother him. He glances at Sam and Flynn stonily, then settles his one-eyed gaze between them. “Tark.”

The program on his left stands at attention. “Sir.”

“You were at the games grid earlier this millicycle?”

“Yessir.”

The commander turns his gaze to Sam. “Is this the User they identified as Sam Flynn?”

Tark glances over Sam briefly. Sam scowls. “It is as far as I can tell, sir.”

“All right.” The commander gives Sam another cursory glance (Sam’s scowl deepens), then turns his attention to Flynn. “And you claim to be Kevin Flynn. The Creator.”

Flynn says nothing. Sam looks at him sidelong, and he doesn’t even seem to be looking at the commander, instead staring into the distance at nothing in particular.

“The Creator has not been seen on the Grid in nearly a thousand cycles,” the commander continues, his voice low and dripping with contempt. “There are some who say that he is dead, that Clu destroyed him when the Purge began. Others claim he hid away in the Outlands, abandoning us to Clu’s tyranny.”

“Yes,” Flynn says.

“So tell me,” the commander says, pulling his disc out and igniting it, “why should I believe that he has returned now?”

Sam moves to raise Quorra’s disc in response, but Flynn catches him by the wrist and forces his hand down. His grip is firm but not tight, and he doesn’t even look away from the commander and his fellows.

“The security protocols on your door could only have been opened by a User or someone with the proper keys,” Flynn replies calmly. “Sam might have managed to get through it with some work, but he’d need to find the door first, and you’ve hidden it far too well for that. Only a User with full administrative access could have found that door without knowing about it, because its existence is recorded in the underlying code of this sector.” He meets the commander’s eyes then, his expression so serious Sam suddenly wants to back away. “My name is Kevin Flynn, and all we want from you is a place to hide.”

A heavy silence follows his words. Sam glances between the commander and his father, holding his breath. The two programs flanking the commander remain remarkably stoic, but the others around them are knotted together by a palpable nervousness. A few of them whisper to one another, their words too quiet for Sam to hear. Another program standing off to one side catches Sam’s eye. He has olive skin and an odd tattoo down the side of his face, and he watches the proceedings with his arms tightly crossed, one gloved hand clenching and unclenching around his disc.

The commander breaks his gaze away first, looking down for just a moment before glancing over Flynn and Sam once more. He meets Flynn’s eyes again almost grudgingly. “All right.” His disc snaps out to punctuate these words, and the tension in the room drops like a stone. “But you will give us aid in return for your shelter.”

“Of course,” Flynn says, nodding. “We’ll discuss it later. Who are you?”

“Bartik,” he replies. He indicates the two programs at his side and continues, “These are my seconds in command, Tark and Yavic. We are the leaders of the largest resistance force on the Grid.”

“Thank you for your help, Bartik. Do you have somewhere Sam can rest?” Flynn asks. “He’s injured, and we need to talk.”

Bartik glances over his shoulder and calls, “Rilke.”

The olive-skinned program with his arms folded looks up and straightens a little. “Sir?”

“Take the User and the Creator to one of the private barracks.”

“Yessir.” Rilke hooks his disc back on its mount and approaches them.

Bartik turns back to Flynn. “We’ll give you a little time, Flynn, but only a little.”

“I understand,” Flynn replies. “Thank you again.”

Bartik moves away from them then, striding back through his people with his seconds trailing him. Rilke inclines his head toward Sam and Flynn. “If you’ll follow me.”

Flynn puts his arm around Sam’s shoulder again, and together they follow Rilke as he leads them through the small knot of programs still waiting around the door. As they enter the building proper, dim lights along the walls, near the ceiling, turn on gradually, illuminating everything. The room they’re in is well-sized but mostly empty. Sam spots some chairs piled in one corner, and a few corridors branching off along each wall. Rilke leads them down one of these and stops at the third door they come to.

He touches his hand to a small panel on the wall, and the door slides open before them with an almost inaudible hiss. A moment later, a light turns on within the room, flooding the hallway with a bright, white light. “I hope this will be sufficient,” he says to Flynn.

“It’s fine, thank you.” They enter the room, side by side.

Sam catches Rilke’s eye and nods. “Thanks.”

Rilke returns the gesture. “Of course, User.”

He waits until they’re both in the room proper, then nods at them both again and departs as the door closes with another hiss.

The room is a little cramped, but it has a bed and a chair and a table, and that’s enough. Sam shrugs off his father’s arm and staggers over to fall onto the bed. He’s pretty sure he’s slept on concrete floors more comfortable than this, but after a night like tonight, anything would be perfect. He carefully swings his legs up and drops onto his back, letting out a long sigh. He still hurts all over, especially in his leg, but God knows he feels better lying down than he does standing up.

After he takes Quorra’s disc and puts it on the table, Flynn pulls the chair over to the bedside and sits down. For a moment, they trade awkward glances, neither quite willing to say anything. This is the first chance they’ve had to really talk since Sam stumbled into the buggy, and now that they can, they don’t know what to say.

“I know you must have a lot of questions,” Flynn says slowly. He leans forward a little, bracing his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. His eyes are more on the floor than on Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam says, thought now that he’s been put on the spot, nothing is coming to mind. “Yeah, I...” He can feels tears prickling at his eyes again, and he blinks a few times to clear them away. He’s cried enough tonight. “Who’s Clu?” he asks, because it’s the first thing that pops into his head.

Flynn looks up at Sam then, his expression unreadable. “I understand you’ve met him.”

Sam nods.

“Clu... I created him. He was supposed to be my avatar in here, someone to maintain the system while I was back home, in our world. It... everything went wrong, that night... that last night I was home. I should have seen it coming, but...” He shakes his head and sighs. “I assume he’s responsible for your injuries?”

“Yeah, he, uh... he tried to kill me a couple times. It’s fine, though,” he says, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. “Hurts like hell, but...” He glances down at his leg again. The light in the room is almost ridiculously bright, and it only makes the wound look worse, worse than it had in the elevator. It looks like it’s stopped bleeding again, but his leg is caked with even more dried blood. He really doesn’t want to know what it looks like underneath all that.

“Disc burns tend to smart like that.” After a moment, Flynn sits up and pats his cloak. He pulls out a small--well, Sam thinks it’s a stick at first, until his father uncaps it and hands it over to him. “Drink this. It’s a shot of liquid energy. A bit more potent than the usual stuff, better for programs, but... it’ll help you feel better.”

Sam sits up halfway and takes the little vial, then tips it back into his mouth.

The energy nearly makes him gag. It’s hot and cold at the same time, and almost electric, too, crackling across his tongue and down his throat and through the rest of him. He coughs as it’s going down, and he has to sit up all the way to catch his breath back.

“Damn,” he says, taking a deep breath. “That was--damn.”

“I know.” Flynn takes the vial back from him and tucks it back into his cloak. “It’ll help, though.” There’s another silence, a long one where they can’t quite look at each other, where they both almost say things but leave them unsaid. Sam wishes that--that this had somehow gone better, that this was _going_ better, but it’s been over twenty-one years, and what the hell was he expecting? He’s grown up, Dad’s grown older, and they’ve both changed.

It shouldn’t have happened like this, he thinks, sinking back down on the bed. He wishes they hadn’t had this reunion in the middle of the chaos that this night has become. They should’ve had time alone, time to... let it happen. Time to get used to each other again, to get used to what’s changed. But instead they’re here, not talking to each other because they don’t know what to say.

Before one of them can say something that won’t change anything, Sam asks another question, one that’s been scratching at the back of his mind ever since Quorra dragged him off to the elevator. “Who’s Rinzler?”

His father looks up at him again, blinking. “Who?”

“Clu’s head lackey, his--his champion,” Sam stammers, remembering his long-ago fight in the games arena. “He fought Quorra when she was rescuing me.”

Flynn’s brow is still furrowed in confusion. “I don’t know anything about Clu’s inner circle. Why do you ask?”

“Because,” Sam says, hoping this won’t sound as nuts as it does in his head, “he spoke to me, and he sounded like Alan Bradley.”

The confusion on his father’s face evaporates instantly. “Tron,” he mutters.

“Tron?”

“He was a security program Alan wrote back when Ed Dillinger was still at Encom. Before they let me back in.” Sam knew the story. Flynn continued, “I brought him here to keep the system safe. I thought Clu had killed him. He tried to fight him off, that night when--”

“When you left?” Sam finishes for him. He doesn’t even try to hide the cold resentment in his voice.

“Sam, I...” Flynn trails off for a moment, then reaches out and touches the edge of the bed, not quite daring to take Sam’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I left you.”

“I--“ Sam doesn’t know what to say. He almost says that it’s all right, that it all turned out okay, but that would be the biggest lie he’s told in his life. It’s not all right, but--he’s not angry about it, or maybe it’s just that he’s not angry about it right now. He blinks, fighting back tears again, and he asks the one question that has burned in his heart since they all gave up on finding him. Since his father was declared missing and possibly dead, since the moment when Sam became certain, beyond any doubt, that his father had abandoned him.

“So why did you?”

His father bows his head, and then slowly unfolds the story. He’d sought to create in the Grid a perfect system, and with Clu and Tron at his side it had all seemed tantalizingly possible. And then the miracle had happened--the Isos had appeared, programs not written by Users but instead organic manifestations of consciousness, born of the Grid itself. They’d changed everything for him, but they had not revealed to him the cracks forming in his grand plan. Clu grew resentful of the newcomers, and only helped stoke other programs’ fear of them, tearing down the bridges Tron and Flynn tried to build. Flynn had even missed Clu’s increased loathing for him, brought on by his extended periods away after Sam had been born. The growing jealousy and resentment should have been obvious, but Flynn had been too caught up in himself and his grand dreams to notice.

The betrayal blindsided him. Flynn had tried to get away, to get home and stop things before they got worse, but the only way out--the Portal created by the laser in the arcade basement--had closed before he could even get near it. He’d been trapped.

A war had followed then, made worse by Tron’s disappearance and Flynn’s attempts to take down Clu. Clu completed his takeover of the system, annihilating the Isos along the way, and Flynn exiled himself to the Outlands. Only one Iso had survived Clu’s purge, a miracle of miracles: Quorra.

He explains at last what had brought him here tonight, after Quorra came to him with Sam’s disc at hand. It had been too long. He couldn’t wait any longer, and he couldn’t leave it to Quorra, capable as she is. He had to come for Sam himself.

Sam listens, doing his best to keep track of the story as his father talks. He doesn’t say anything until his father reaches the very end, and then he asks another question that has been in the back of his mind. “So what are we gonna do now?”

“I don’t know,” Flynn replies, sighing. “Clu probably has the entire city on high alert at this point, so I don’t even know if we can leave this building without getting caught.”

“What about the Portal, could we get out through there? It’s still open, right?”

“It is for now. We’ve got at least a few hours more, I think, but if we can’t get out of the city, then...” Flynn hesitates. “We may have to wait it out.”

Maybe it’s the buzz from that shot of energy, or the persistent aches and pains all over his body, but it takes a moment for the implications of this to wash over Sam. If they wait--if they wait, then he’s trapped, too. Disappeared just like Dad did. No one knew where he was going last night (or tonight, or a million years ago, which is what it feels like). They’d find his motorcycle, certainly, and there’s a chance, however slim, that Alan or someone _might_ find the lab under the arcade and work out what it was for, but...

How long has his father been waiting on that same slim chance?

“Dad, you can’t be serious--you’re not--“

“It’s just an option,” Flynn says quickly. “But if Clu captures us and gets my disc, then it’s game over, for this world and ours.”

“...Why?”

“If Clu has my disc, and if the Portal’s open, then he can use it to get through to our world. And I don’t want to think about what might happen if he does. If we have to wait it out, Sam, we will.”

“But if it’s open--Dad, we could go home again. You could come _home_. Don’t you want that?” It’s been too damn long for him to give up now. He’s been dealing with so much shit tonight--with Clu and Rinzler and not knowing what the hell is going on--and this is the last of it. He’s not going to lie down and take this, too. He doesn’t want to give up, especially now that he’s finally, _finally_ found his father, after twenty-one years without him.

“I’m not saying that’s the plan,” Flynn says. “But if we have to--“

“There has to be a way around Clu. I mean, you created him, can’t you just destroy him?”

Flynn shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that. We’re more connected than ordinary Users and programs. He’d be able to stop me before I even got started. It’s why I left the city in the first place. Without me around to build off of, he was only a tyrant.”

“And you’re just gonna let him _keep_ being a tyrant?”

“If there was another option, Sam, I would have taken it,” Flynn says, his voice suddenly sharp. “I would take it in a heartbeat, if I could get you home safely. And there might be. I don’t know.” He pauses a moment, then shakes his head a little. “We’ll take things as they come, all right? Bartik might be able to help us.”

“Right.” Sam doesn’t even try to hide the anger in his voice. “Right, yeah. Fine.”

“I’m going to go see what Bartik wants from us,” Flynn says, more quietly. “Get some rest. Try to sleep if you can, all right?”

“Yeah.”

Flynn almost says something else, but only shakes his head again and gets to his feet. He leaves, and Sam is alone. He lies there on the bed, still seething a little, but soon his exhaustion gets the better of him. He closes his eyes and sleeps soundly for the first time tonight.

**ooo ooo ooo**

He returns to his master in silence, his deception finished and hidden away. They are alone together in the gallery of the throne ship, still docked to the sys admin tower. His master greets him with a small smile but no further pleasantries.

“What happened back there?”

“Can’t remember,” he replies, his voice rough. He so rarely needs to speak, even to his master. This is one of those times where he _must_ speak, though, for if his master decides to search his memories, he will be found out. “Malfunctions.”

This is a lie, but a necessary one.

“Malfunctions again?” His master turns away and paces the length of the room, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “I was watching on the video link,” he says, moving back toward him. “You almost had them both down. And you don’t remember what happened?”

He shakes his head.

Another lie.

“Malfunctions. Didn’t hear Iso coming. Thought she was down.” That is true as far as it goes, but he carefully does not mention why he failed to hear the Iso approaching him from behind.

“I see.” His master nods, his face still wearing half a smile. “Well, it’s all right.”

Now Rinzler is no longer the only one lying. He heard the reports in the control room on his way in. The Iso was subdued and detained outside the tower, but the User Sam Flynn escaped. If he had not failed his master,

_Alan_1_  
_I have failed you._

then they both would be captured, and his master would be able to continue his work towards finding Flynn the Creator. And now the User and the Creator both are loose in the city, and his master has no starting point to begin a search.

“I need you at your best, Rinzler,” his master says, pacing back towards him. “I can repair you.” He holds out his hand.

This is how it always goes. He unhooks his discs, locked together, and hands them over as he has always done. And his master smiles at him, as he has always done, and takes the discs and opens them.

He has been plagued by these malfunctions before, of course. They have always haunted him, at random intervals, but it was never until now that he paused to think about them. What need was there before? His master has done everything within his power as system administrator to make him the best, and the malfunctions have always been irregularities that needed smoothing away.

But it was never until now that he heard the name Tron, and the name Alan, and saw for himself the blood of a User. It was never until now that he remembered things he had never learned in the first place.

He waits and watches as his master pores through his code, searching for the imperfections that prevent him from fulfilling his directives. He is still and silent, as always, but he watches this time in apprehension. He fears (and when has he ever feared?) that he has not hidden the names and memories well enough, that his master will see the inconsistencies in his code, and unlock them, and discover that he knows and remembers much more than he is telling.

He wonders what will happen if he is found out, if his plan does not succeed.

The data will be eliminated. He will forget.

He does not want to forget.

He knows how much his master needs him, particularly now, now that they are moving against Flynn the Creator. He will not be derezzed for his insurrection. Perhaps not immediately. Perhaps after they have succeeded, he will be derezzed, but he knows that his master needs him now. And he knows that that may keep him safe for a while.

He wants to remember,  
and find out why he remembers at all.

He watches his master carefully, and he is glad in some part of him that he has trained himself to give nothing away, for he needs now to hide that he is afraid. He knows the vulnerable look of fear, and he knows his master does as well. He has seen fear in programs faltering before him on the games grid, and in programs kneeling before him and begging for mercy before he makes the final blow--

_Alan_1_  
_Alan_1, I am sorry._  
_I have failed you._  
  
_I have failed myself._

He stands stock still as the thoughts wash over him, for his master cannot know--

His master closes out his discs. The light of his code vanishes, and the discs are quiescent, and he has not been discovered. He only nods as his master hands the discs back to him. He does not hesitate to hook the discs back on their mount, to wait patiently while the minor changes his master has made sync. He does as he has always done in these moments, and it is enough to carry the deception.

The names of Tron and Alan still whisper at the back of his mind, the memories still lurk beneath the surface. He has not forgotten.

He does not show that he is relieved. He can continue his work for his master now. He will capture Flynn the creator for his master, and his master’s plans will succeed. Perhaps he will discover on his own time the truth of everything that has surfaced in his mind tonight.

“I need you at your best, Rinzler,” his master says again. He is no longer smiling. “We’re very close to succeeding, you know.”

He says nothing.

“They’re bringing the Iso girl up here,” his master says. “Keep an eye on her while we talk. You know how treacherous they can be.”

He nods. He will do this duty as long as his master asks, but he will also do duty to himself, and some cycle soon, perhaps, he will uncover the truth.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Flynn pauses outside the door to the little room. He’s angry and frustrated, but he knows it. He closes his eyes and breathes in and out slowly. Going to Bartik like that will only make things worse, and Flynn has a feeling he isn’t going to like what Bartik has to say.

He’s not angry at Sam, not really. Sam reminds him a little of himself, to be honest. A much younger Kevin Flynn, and one not nearly so cocky as he was. He does want to go home, and he won’t blame Sam for bringing that up. But he’s had these conversations with himself, so many cycles ago. He still remembers the sudden, awful feeling he got in the pit of his stomach when he saw the Portal vanish from the sky.

He tried to stop Clu after that, he really did. And he does have another option, one he has mentioned only to Quorra. Like Sam, she had wanted to know he couldn’t simply destroy Clu. The answer was that he could. He could reintegrate Clu, recall his code to himself, because it was from him that Clu had been created. But Flynn has only ever imagined that as a last resort, for a number of reasons. One is that the effects of the reintegration would be catastrophically huge.

The other is that the reintegration would destroy him as well as Clu.

It’s something he’s considered only a handful of times, and each time he has rejected it as an option. As much as he’s come to peace with his life here, he isn’t quite ready to die. When the time comes, he will face it peacefully, he hopes, but for now... he wants to stay alive. For Sam’s sake, if nothing else.

If he has to do it tonight--if it means the difference between Sam making it home and Sam being trapped or captured or killed--then he’ll do it. But not now. Not unless he has to.

He continues his breathing exercise for a little longer, then sets off down the corridor towards the room they entered through. Only a few programs sit here now, apparently on guard. One of them points him down a different hallway. “Second door on your left,” she says. Flynn nods his thanks and hurries on.

Flynn knocks on the door to be polite. It slides open, and he’s greeted by the sound of conversation suddenly dying off. There are many more programs here than greeted them in the foyer, and the room is much larger to match the size of the meeting. Flynn steps inside, ignoring the stares and whispers that follow him as he makes his way through the parting crowd to the table where Bartik stands.

Those others around the table move to make space for Flynn, but Bartik only glances at him. His attention is fixed on the map displayed on the table’s surface. His greeting is curt: “Flynn.”

“Bartik.” A chair is pushed forward from somewhere back in the crowd, obviously meant for him. Flynn sits down and folds his hands on the table before him. “What is it you want from me?”

“Only what every decent program wants: a free system.” Bartik pores over the map, which as far as Flynn can tell is a detailed map of this sector. Without looking up, he continues, “We will take our system back. Our network spans across the city, and we have been trying to get through to the other factions for many cycles now. There is too much happening here that Clu’s leadership does not explain.”

“What do you mean?” Flynn thinks he has at least a rudimentary handle on the city’s internal goings-on, thanks to Quorra’s brief expeditions to the outer sectors. Bartik’s tone seems to indicate something he’s missed, and he wonders for half a moment what could be so terrible that not even ordinary programs would gossip about it.

“Programs are disappearing all over the city,” Bartik replies. “They’re detained for minor errors in public, but then they’re never heard from again. There’s a record of those sent to the games, or to labor elsewhere, but the rest of them disappear.”

“We might have hints of their whereabouts from their fellow detainees,” adds Yavic, one of Bartik’s seconds. “But they are, of course, unavailable to us.”

Flynn frowns. He hasn’t heard about this, which surprises him. It sounds like something Quorra would overhear, a common knowledge passed around out of the guards’ hearing. Programs can’t just disappear from the system. He’d made sure there was a record, kept automatically in the sys admin tower, and not even Clu could dismantle it.

But Clu doesn’t have to dismantle things to make them serve his purpose, Flynn realizes. _Damn._

“How long has this been going on?” he asks.

“Twenty or thirty cycles,” replies Tark, the other second. “Possibly more, but we can’t be sure. It started gradually. We’ve only known about it for a few cycles ourselves, but it is happening, sir, and more frequently in the last few decicycles.”

“Clu’s behind it,” Bartik says, looking up from his map for the first time.

“Yes, I think you’re right there,” Flynn says quietly.

“If we could prove it,” Bartik plows on, “it would be enough to unite us all, to take back the city and put an end to Clu once and for all. And you can help us.”

Flynn shakes his head. “I can’t stop Clu for you. If that’s what you want, then I can’t help you.”

“Then what can you do?” Bartik snaps. “You _abandoned_ us. Nearly one thousand cycles we’ve spent under Clu’s heel, unregulated and uncontained. You are his User. You created him, and you expect us to believe that you cannot stop him?”

“If I could have stopped him before, I would have,” Flynn replies shortly. “I left the city because I didn’t have another choice.”

“And now you’re back. Why?”

“Because of Sam.”

Bartik blinks. “The User?”

“He’s--important to me,” Flynn says. “I wasn’t going to leave him to Clu.”

Bartik stares at him, his one-eyed gaze turned angry again. “So you did not return for us,” he says. “Or for the system at all. How typical--“

“That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to help.”

“You said yourself--“

“Only that I can’t stop Clu.” Flynn pauses, his mind rolling over the options, trying to settle on a plan. “Is the Portal still open, do you know?”

There are murmurs of assent from behind him, but Bartik only scoffs. Tark steps in to answer. “It has been open for the last quarter of a millicycle, Creator. Perhaps a bit longer, but not by much.”

“What kind of transport resources do you have? Light cycles, a light jet, anything?”

“What are you proposing?” Bartik asks suddenly. “That we help you back to your world, so you can abandon us completely?”

“No.” Flynn meets Bartik’s gaze, and they hold each other’s eyes for several long seconds as he continues speaking. “If you help us to the Portal in time, and if we make it back to the re--the Users’ world, I can help the system from the outside. I can’t stop Clu in here, but outside I can remove him from the system completely. It would give you the chance to take things back and start rebuilding. To bring the Grid back to what it was.”

“And would you return to help us, _Creator?_ ” He spits the word out with venom. “Or would you abandon us again?”

“I will do everything I can to stop Clu and help you,” Flynn repeats. Bartik has not looked away from him, and he doesn’t dare break his gaze now. Even he isn’t quite sure what he’s promising. What if Clu captures them? What if they don’t make it to the Portal in time? What then? But a rudimentary plan is better than no plan at all. The what-ifs aren’t important right now. They can take things as they come, and with any luck, it will all work out.

He _hopes._

He wants to avoid promising Clu’s destruction. Clu is far too deeply integrated with the system; destroying him might well cause everything he’s influenced and changed here to shatter. Even on the other side it would be impossible to delete him, if Flynn could even bring himself to do that. But if he’s quick enough, and smart enough, he’s fairly certain he can isolate Clu from the rest of the system to keep him from causing further harm. He’ll never be sure until he can actually try it.

“All right,” Bartik says at last. “We will be _counting_ on your assistance after your departure. And all the Users help you if you don’t deliver and dare return.”

Flynn doesn’t flinch at the threat. He knows he’s not lying, which is good enough for him. “Back to resources. What kinds of transport do you all have access to?”

“Most of us have personal vehicles,” Yavic offers. “Lightcycles and such. But we can’t afford to let those be noticed, not if we need to get ready for official movement against Clu’s forces.”

“But you’re proposing we cross the Sea,” says another program farther down the table. “The only way to do that is with a jet or a flier--“

“And I am not risking my programs to break into a guard compound,” Bartik cuts in firmly. “So unless you can write a lot of new code in a hurry--“

“What about the solar sailers?” pipes up a voice from the back of the room. Flynn turns in his seat in time to see the crowd parting around the program Rilke, who stands with his arms folded and his jaw set.

“The sailers take goods to the other cities,” Tark says slowly. “We couldn’t change their course without getting noticed.”

“There’s one that doesn’t.” Rilke steps closer to the table. “Sir,” he says to Bartik, “you’ve had me doing watches down in the hangar bays for over a decicycle. I told you last general meeting there’s a sailer that heads out over the Sea with unknown cargo. It’s the direction the Creator needs to go, and another shipment is due to go out tonight.”

Bartik appears unimpressed by this knowledge. “Where does it end out, though? I do not intend to risk programs by flinging them into the unknown--“

“It’s all we’ve got,” Flynn breaks in. “I’ll take it if it’s the only real chance we’ve got to make it in time, and I promise I’ll do my best keep anyone who comes with us safe.” He glances back at Bartik. “We’re short on time. This is our best chance.”

A silence stretches between the two of them. Bartik’s eye narrows as he clenches his jaw. Finally, he says, “All right. But I will hold you to your promises. Remember that.”

**ooo ooo ooo**

Calmness slips away from her like a wave of crumbling code. Every time Quorra reaches for peace, she remembers where she is and what is happening and the fear comes rushing back.

She is surrounded by Black Guard. Two marching alongside her, their grips on her arms firm and cold. One in front of her, leading the way. A small complement of four directly behind her. She heard them discussing their orders while they waited in the tower lobby. They are to bring her to Clu unharmed. If she tries to run away, they will catch her and bring her back. If she fights back and attacks them, they will only subdue her, not derezz her. All because Clu wants to see her.

They know. She cannot think how, but they _know_. And if they know, Clu knows, and she does not know how he could have found out--

Zuse, she realizes. He’s in league with Clu--and Clu nearly intercepted them when they were leaving the End of Line. Of course Zuse would have told him that she survived, that she was the last of the Isos. Anything to save himself from Clu’s wrath.

The guards march her into one of the elevators, surrounding her. The doors slide closed and the ascent begins. Quorra stares at the back of the helmet of the guard in front of her, its black surface a mirror in the elevator’s bright light. Her expression is a mask of learned stoicism, the only way to survive in a world where a wrong step could get you derezzed on the spot. She flinches at the memory of that life on the run, and then the fear bubbles up again and overtakes her.

She does not want to imagine what is waiting for her at the top of the tower, and yet her mind keeps presenting her with the awful possibilities. Clu made his hatred of the Isos clear even before he betrayed Flynn. In a way, the Purge was the full expression of that hatred.

_And she is the last of them._

The elevator smoothly comes to a halt. She walks in step with the two Black Guards as they march her out into the corridor. She wants now more than ever to struggle, to run away, but she barely has the energy. She hasn’t stopped going since she escaped the games grid, and now she cannot stop at all.

They turn a corner, and Quorra bites back a gasp.

The end of the hallway opens up into a blackness lit with red. And standing in that darkness, his hands clasped behind his back and an awful smile on his face, is Clu.

She’d run away, but where can she go? She has run so far and so much in her life, and it seems her efforts have come to nothing, for she’s now in front of the program she has been ultimately been running from.

The Black Guard in front of her approaches Clu and stands to attention. “The prisoner, as per your request, sir.”

“Thanks,” Clu says. His voice is casual, reminding Quorra a little of Flynn, though she wishes it didn’t. He stands aside as Quorra is marched past him into the throne ship. “I’ll take it from here,” he tells the guard. “Leave us.”

The guard thumps his staff on the floor in acknowledgement, and Quorra hears all of them walking away. A door hisses shut behind her, but she does not turn to look. She is afraid, more afraid than she has been in her life, but she knows she _cannot_ show it in front of Clu. She stares straight ahead, swaying a little from exhaustion, and she notices that they are alone in this room save for a dark figure lurking in the corner: Rinzler.

She has no time to formulate a thought about this. Clu steps closer to her, and in the corner of her eye she can see him still smiling. “So, here you are.” He begins to circle her, hands still behind his back, voice light and easygoing. “The last of the Isos.” He draws the syllables out, his voice dropping nearly to a whisper on the last word. “The only one left.”

With one hand, he delicately pulls down the fabric of her left sleeve, revealing the glowing mark there, the mark that singled out the Isos as unique from ordinary programs. His gloved fingers are shockingly cold, and it takes every ounce of her self-control not to flinch away from him. She cannot show she is afraid.

He runs one finger over the mark, touching it so lightly that it almost feels like he isn’t touching it at all. Quorra shivers, but she does not turn to look at him, and she does not move away. She isn’t going to let him do this to her. She isn’t going to let him break her.

“You are a rarity, aren’t you?” Just as gently as before, he pulls her sleeve back up and smoothes it out with two fingers. “How did you escape? Because, you know, I thought I’d destroyed all of you. Every last one.” He says each word slowly, pausing between each one as if to savor it. She does her very best to ignore him, to stare straight ahead and not react, even though he is reaching right down to play on old fears and awful memories.

“And yet here you are,” he says again, coming around in front of her. “He saved you, didn’t he? He did. It’s the sort of thing he’d do, especially for one of you. You know he tried to stop me? He really did. All those things he did...” He chuckles softly. “As if he could stop _me._

“I can see why he saved you, though.” And now she can’t ignore him completely, for he reaches up with one hand and brushes his fingers down the side of her face, catching a lock of her hair between his finger and thumb. The smile on his face has been replaced by a smaller grin full of nothing pleasant. “You are quite lovely, for a virus.”

Quorra snaps then. A spark of raw fear breaks through her resolve and she turns her face away from him, staring pointedly at the far corner of the room, at anything other than him. Her hair slides between his fingers and out of them, and he is no longer touching her.

But she’s broken, and they both know it. Though she is certain he is going to kill her eventually, she cannot help now but think of all the things he might do to her before then. Every fear she clamped down on her way here comes screaming to the front of her mind again, all of them fighting for precedence.

She closes her eyes and tries to calm herself by breathing deeply, but her meditation is suddenly and awfully interrupted by a cold hand on her chin.

Her eyes snap open, and all she can see is Clu’s face. “What are you doing?” he asks.

She clenches her jaw and does not answer. She’s shaking a little now, and she’s certain Clu has noticed that. She’s visibly afraid now, and he knows it. She closes her eyes again. She doesn’t have to look at him. She doesn’t have to give him the pleasure of seeing the fear in her eyes.

His grip on her chin tightens for half a second and then he lets go. She hears him pacing again, walking around her, and this time his hand lingers over the empty disc mount on her back. “Did you lose your disc?” He tuts her, and even in her mind she can see him shaking his head in mock disappointment. “You know you shouldn’t let that happen. How am I supposed to know who you are?”

“You already know who I am,” she replies, her voice low.

“Only a little,” he says. “The last Iso, Zuse told me. Flynn’s little pet. What was it like, out there with him? Was it lonely?”

She opens her eyes as he continues his circuit around her, his voice even and measured, his words carefully chosen.

“Do you miss your kind?” he asks softly. “Does it hurt, to know that you are the last of them? That you’re the only one left?”

She knows the question he is leaving unsaid, the knowledge that has lurked at the back of her mind ever since she realized she was coming here.

_How does it feel, knowing that I’m going to kill you?_

Quorra cannot hide now that she is afraid, and he knows it.

“I think we both know how this is going to end.” He moves to stand in front of her again. “So. Why don’t you tell me where he is?”

She swallows, but she doesn’t look at him as she answers. “He’s far away from here, Clu. And you are never going to catch him.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Clu says. “He came out of exile just to save his son. I’m sure he’d risk it to get you back. His precious little Iso.”

For a half a moment, she believes him, and the thought terrifies her. If Flynn tries to come back for her, Clu could capture him. Clu could obtain his disc. And then it would all be over. Flynn told her many, many cycles ago what Clu wanted to do when he betrayed him. What he might try to do if the Portal ever opened again, as it has now.

He would use Flynn’s disc to cross through to the Users’ world. And then he would try to mold that world--that _wonderful_ world Quorra has tried countless times to imagine--as he has molded the Grid, destroying its imperfections completely.

_But he wouldn’t,_ she thinks. _He wouldn’t._ He knows she made this choice. He wouldn’t void it by coming back for her, especially when he knows even better than she does what is at stake. This is so much more important than she is, and she hopes--she knows Flynn would not take that risk.

She’s made her choices, and she will stand by them to the end.

“He wouldn’t,” she says, her voice shaking but loud.

“Oh, really? You’re sure of that?” He chuckles, and just the sound of it makes Quorra squirm. “I think he might,” he says. “Like I said, you are lovely.”

He touches her chin again, one finger slowly tracing her jaw line, leaving a trail of coldness on her skin. She closes her eyes again, and as he touches the very tip of her chin and pushes her face upwards, she shrugs him off, or tries to.

It happens so suddenly that for a moment she can’t even react. He grabs her by the back of the neck, his grip no longer light and delicate, but rough and painful. She can’t shrug him off again, not as seizes her arm with his other hand. And for a moment she is paralyzed, and in that moment he pulls her closer--

She reacts before anything more happens, wrenching herself away from him and kicking out as hard as she can, catching Clu in the stomach. They fall apart, and Quorra stumbles away from him, still off her balance from the kick. But they are no longer touching, and for just a moment that’s enough.

Rinzler knocks her down before she gets more than a few feet away. She lands hard on her stomach, and he pins her there with one knee. Then she hears the harsh buzz of an igniting disc, very near her ear.

“All it takes is a word from me,” says Clu, his voice a little winded and strained. “One word, and you’re gone. The last stain on this system eliminated.”

_And it would be worth it,_ Quorra thinks. _I’ve protected Flynn, I saved Sam. You’ll never catch them, and they’ll escape._ She waits, breathing calmly, the buzz of Rinzler’s disc thrumming through her. It’s strange, how at peace she is now. Her fear is still there, still bubbling away, but it doesn’t matter now. She’s done her part. This is the end.

After a long silence, Clu finally speaks again. “I’ve got a better idea. Lock her up,” he says to Rinzler. “And make sure she’s guarded. We’re going to the Rectifier.”

Rinzler’s disc goes out, and the pressure on her back vanishes. A moment later, she’s pulled to her feet and dragged out of the room to a little cell in the corridor. He shoves her inside, and the doors close behind her. The cell is cramped, but there’s a bench. Quorra sits down, but she cannot relax, even after that reprieve. 

If Clu isn’t going to simply kill her, then what does he have planned for her?


	10. Escape from Tron City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as ever for your patience.
> 
> Chapter Eleven: The Rectifier will be posted on October 2, 2016.

There are six of them in total: Sam, Flynn, the leader Bartik, and three of Bartik’s men: Rilke, Tarlok, and Psi. Flynn walks down the street with Bartik and Psi; Sam follows with Rilke and Tarlok, about twenty paces behind. Sam’s feeling better from his rest at the resistance headquarters, and his leg is much better thanks to the vial of energy his father gave him. It still hurts him, though, and he has to walk with a limp. It’s thanks to this, and his carrying Quorra’s disc in addition to his own, that the two programs flank him closely on either side. No need to attract any more attention that necessary.

Sam fights down the urge to look over his shoulder every time they’re passed by a pair of Clu’s red-lined sentries. The plan, as far as he’s been told, is to walk to a shipping bay in the lower levels of the city, eliminate any guards who could report their presence, then hitch a ride out to the Portal. And then, finally, go home.

He’s trying not to hope too much. There’s still so much that could go wrong, especially since—he clenches his jaw to keep from looking around—there seem to be more and more sentries and guards the farther they get into the city. Sam still can’t quite understand how they haven’t been stopped yet. But Flynn had confirmed back at the headquarters that the sentries had been ordered to look for a pair traveling together, not two groups of three. And despite their silly get-ups—Flynn with his robes and cloak, and Sam with a borrowed long coat to disguise his games grid outfit—no one has paid them any mind. Sam just hopes that it’ll last.

More and more of Clu's lackeys appear, but none of them take notice of two clumps of programs in the increasing crowds. Sam doesn't breathe any easier. His leg is aches more the longer he walks on it, but he can't afford to limp any more than he already is. He grits his teeth and keeps going, trying his best to ignore the pain. It's not as bad as it was, he reminds himself. It's nowhere near that anymore.

"How much farther do we have to go?" he asks quietly.

"A few more blocks," whispers Rilke. "Then down the service stairs to the bay."

"Right." He takes a deep breath to steel himself, and keeps walking.

His leg is begging for a rest by the time they reach their destination: a nondescript door in a small kiosk next to a towering building. The stands open; Flynn and the others had disappeared through it ahead of them. Rilke and Tarlok hustle Sam casually through the door, and then Tarlok shuts it behind them. "The worst is over," Rilke says to Sam. "Is your injury holding up well?"

"Hurts like hell," Sam growls. Rilke looks confused; Sam sighs. "It hurts. But what else is new?"

"All right. Let's continue. They'll be waiting for us in the bay."

Their way down the stairs is slow going, at least until Sam figures out how to use the handrails to swing his bad leg over every other step. They reach the bay in decent time, though Bartik looks impatient as they emerge on the landing. He says nothing to them, but Flynn steps forward to grip Sam's shoulder. "Glad you made it," he says.

"You too," Sam mumbles. He's glad when Bartik clears his throat, because at least he doesn't have to come up with anything else to say.

"The transport is leaving soon," Bartik says. "We need to get this done if we're to reach the Portal in time."

Flynn turns away from Sam, but keeps his grip on his shoulder. "Of course. You're in charge here, Bartik; what do you need me to do?"

"Get into the security feed," Bartik replies. "Find out how many guards there are, and then shut the feed down so we can take them out."

"All right." Flynn gives Sam's shoulder a squeeze, then turns his attention to the nearest wall. Sam watches as he splays his fingers against the flat surface, then twists his wrist to open an invisible panel, revealing flowing lines of code Sam can't hope to understand. He stares, slightly mesmerized, as Flynn scrolls through the code, tapping bits of it here and there and pushing other sections away until the code resolves itself into an image on the wall: the security feed.

"Looks like two sentries down there," Flynn remarks. He looks up at Bartik. "Think your men can handle it?"

Bartik gives Flynn a scorching look. "I think we'll be just fine, _Creator_. Rilke, Tarlok--approach them from behind while Psi distracts them. _Don't_ cause a commotion."

"Yessir," the three programs reply in unison. Without another word, they hurry around the corner and into the bay proper. Sam, Flynn, and Bartik meanwhile turn as one to watch the security feed.

The feed is unchanged for a moment, and then Psi wanders into view. Even from here, they can hear him singing, though Sam doesn't remotely recognize the song. His first thought is that Psi is pretending to be drunk, but... can programs even _get_ drunk? (Does he even want to know?) Whatever it is Psi's doing, however, is certainly getting the guards' attention; they have both abandoned their posts to approach him.

Then two discs speed into view, striking each guard in the back. Flynn taps the feed on the wall with two fingers, and the image dissolves into static. They all can hear sounds of fighting from within the bay, but they don't dare look out to see if the coast is clear. Instead they wait in tense silence. Sam fidgets with Quorra's disc, gripping and turning it in one hand. His injured leg throbs, reminding him of how much he has been through tonight, and how close he is to the end of it all. If they get through this, they're practically home free.

But first they have to catch the sailer out of the city.

The sound of footsteps brings his mind back to the present. It's Rilke, slightly out of breath but in one piece. "All clear," he says, nodding to his commander. "The sailer's in final preparations; we need to hurry if we're going to catch it."

There's no time for any more words; they all set off around the corner as fast as they can.

Sam has to stop himself from gawking when he finally sees the solar sailer they've been talking about: a vast vehicle that looks like a cross between a train and an umbrella. Solid cargo containers hang together to form a two-decked body, with vast, petal-like sails on the far end. But even so, he's falling behind the others, his limp losing him distance even as he pushes himself as hard as he can. He sees Tarlok and Psi waiting at the entrance to the sailer as Rilke dashes past them; his father and Bartik aren't far behind him, but Sam is even farther behind.

His leg is screaming, howling for relief, but he can't stop. He clenches his teeth and pushes himself again. _Just a bit farther, just a bit--_

There's a sound of power being turn on and an almighty thud. Sam pays it no mind, until he hears his father screaming his name.

The sailer has begun to move.

Sam can't be more than twenty feet away, but panic sets in anyway: he's not going to make it. The sailer is going to leave, and he's going to be stranded here, alone, left to the mercies of Clu's guards and possibly even Clu himself again.

He can't let that happen.

Sam puts on another, impossible burst of speed, even as his leg throbs with fresh pain, even as the sailer's loading ramp leaves the ground.

He reaches the sailer and puts all his strength behind a leap—

The ramp hits him squarely in the chest, knocking his wind out as he scrabbles for purchase, his legs dangling. Hands seize his arms almost immediately, pulling him aboard.

He doesn't even have the breath to say thank you. He collapses on the floor, gasping for air as he curls around his injured leg.

Someone helps him to his knees. Arms embrace him, and it takes Sam a moment to realize that it's his father. He awkwardly returns the embrace, and his father whispers, "I thought I'd lost you again."

Sam notices the "again." "Me too," he croaks back.

Flynn strokes the back of Sam's head, then finally pulls away. "Let's get you somewhere you can rest."

"Sounds good." Flynn helps Sam to his feet, and supports him as he limps further into the confines of the sailer.

He hears Bartik say, "Do you still think they're worth it?"

And Rilke replies, "Of course."

**ooo ooo ooo**

It's been half an hour, maybe more, since their chaotic departure from the city. Sam's found a place to sit near the fore end of the sailer, on the upper deck. His bad leg is stretched out in front of him, but his other leg is bent so he can rest his arm on his knee. He’s been fidgeting with Quorra’s disc again, but for now he places it on the deck in front of him. Out beyond the massive sails, in the dark and cloudy sky, he can see a bright and distant light in the sky. The Portal. Their ticket home, if things don't go to hell in the meantime.

He doesn't want to hope, but it keeps on happening. They're so close now. And maybe it's easier to hope now, when earlier tonight things had seemed so hopeless. It wasn't until Quorra attacked Rinzler in that hallway that Sam began to have any hope of getting home.

Sam sighs as he remembers Quorra's sacrifice, especially now in light of what his father told him about her being an Iso. He still doesn't fully understand what that means, but he knows it makes her unique, and it makes Clu hate her. He can relate to that, at least. But thinking about what Clu did to him, and what he might in turn do to her, makes him wish even more that he'd convinced her to escape with him.

"User."

Sam looks up to see Rilke standing nearby. "Yeah?"

"May I join you? The view from here is exquisite."

Sam shrugs. "Sure. It's Sam, by the way," he adds as Rilke sits down beside him.

"Sam?" Rilke sounds slightly confused.

"My name."

"Of course." A short silence, then: "Is your injury mending well?"

"Not really mending," Sam replies. "Hurts less, though, which I guess is good."

"Yes."

They exchange an awkward glance, then both return to looking at the view of the faraway Portal. Sam doesn't really know what to say to the program, and he's rotten at small talk anyway.

"You seem troubled, Sam Flynn," Rilke says, after the silence has stretched past comfortable.

"You spend half your night being tortured and running from a madman, tell me how you feel," Sam snaps. He's being meaner than he needs to be, but he doesn’t care right now.

"Clu is a madman," Rilke agrees. "It's lucky he didn't kill you. He despises Users almost as much as he did the Isos."

"Yeah." Sam glances back at the Portal, then looks down at Quorra's disc on the floor in front of him. "Lucky."

"How did you escape him?" Rilke asks. "If it's not too much to ask."

_It is_ , Sam thinks coldly, but he says, "I was rescued by a program. Quorra. She was--is a friend of Dad's, I think. Flynn's. She let herself get captured so I could get away. And she's an Iso." _And probably dead by now, if they took her to Clu._

"There aren't any Isos left," Rilke says, sounding very certain.

"Apparently she's the last one," Sam replies. "She escaped somehow, met up with Flynn. And now Clu has her."

Rilke stares at him, but his thoughts are obviously elsewhere. Sam doesn't know what else to say, and leaves him to his silence. Eventually, though, Rilke speaks.

"I knew an Iso," he says. "Remora. She was... exquisite. Intelligent. Vivacious. Endlessly fascinated by everything. We were..." He paused. "I told her to go home, to the Iso district, the night the Purge began."

Sam has nothing to say to that. How can you comfort someone who knows they made the wrong choice? He wonders why Rilke is even telling him this, but then again, it seems obvious: he shares Sam's guilt.

“I wonder if I might have been able to keep her safe,” Rilke continues. “So many tried to protect their friends. But there were many more programs who hated the Isos almost as much as Clu did, and he encouraged their animosity until his purposes were met and the Isos were all wiped out. And then he turned his attention to us.”

"How'd you end up with Bartik and his crowd?" Sam asks.

"I wanted to make up for what I did," Rilke says with a shrug. "My function isn't very useful, but I'm good at going unnoticed, and Bartik is always looking for new spies. The old ones keep getting derezzed," he adds with a hollow laugh. "I work for him in the hopes that we can have a truly free system again. Perhaps when the Creator returns to his world, it will be possible."

"Yeah." 

More silence drifts between them. After a while, Rilke says, "It's possible Clu won't kill your friend Quorra outright, not if she is the last of the Isos. I'm sure you know what he's like when it comes to revenge."

"Yeah, no kidding."

"Yes. If he pursues us, there may be some chance of rescuing her."

"Yeah?"

"If there is such a chance, you'll have my help." He meets Sam's eyes, and Sam can immediately tell he's sincere. It's in his eyes and expression, in his guilt and his hope and his belief in the future. He means what he says.

"Thanks," Sam says.

They say nothing else as they turn again to gaze at the Portal, far away but getting closer.

**ooo ooo ooo**

They have left the confines of the city and are already out above the Sea of Simulation. Clu stands at the head of the throne ship, looking out the great window at the light of the Portal. They're due to reach the Rectifier in a short while, and then his real work on the Iso can begin. It wouldn't do to kill her right away, not when she's expecting it. Besides, he has more... resources at the Rectifier than he does here on the ship. She'll pay for everything she's done, and then, perhaps, he'll derezz her.

He hears the doors behind him hiss open, followed by a soft "Oh!" from Jarvis, who Clu knows has come face to face with Rinzler. Clu turns in time to see his champion stepping aside to admit Jarvis, who approaches Clu cautiously.

"What is it," Clu says flatly. He has no patience left for further disappointments, and Jarvis' expression gives him little hope of good news.

"There was fighting in one of the city's sublevel hangar bays," Jarvis says. "The sentries were attacked and derezzed, but the security feeds were offline for the duration of the attack. We believe this to be the work of Flynn the Creator."

"If you haven't captured him, Jarvis, why are you here?" Clu asks. Jarvis flinches.

"It's, uh, where the attack took place that I thought deserved your attention--"

"Get to the point," Clu snaps.

"Hangar Bay 113!" Jarvis half-yelps. "It's where your, uh, special cargo departs for the Rec--our destination."

"And he stopped it?"

"No, sir. The solar sailer departed as scheduled. We believe--"

"That's all I need to hear," Clu says. He's grinning now, because he knows exactly what Jarvis was about to suggest. "You're dismissed."

"Yessir."

He wants to laugh. Flynn caught the sailer, because he believes it's headed towards the Portal. But he's wrong.

Flynn's not going to reach the Portal. He'll reach the Rectifier first.

And Clu's going to get there before him.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Breathe in.

Flynn kneels on the upper platform of the solar sailer, meditating. He doesn't bother trying to clear his thoughts. Instead, he organizes them.

They don't know where the sailer is bound.

They don't know what Clu is up to.

And he doesn't know what has happened to Quorra.

First things first: the sailer and its destination. All they knew when they caught this ride was that it set out over the Sea of Simulation. What awaits them so far afield, Flynn doesn't know. This ship has cargo, so it's bound for somewhere, but there's a very low chance it will take them clear out to the Portal. But there's nothing out amid the Sea. Unless...

It's been a thousand cycles. Clu certainly hasn't spent that time sitting down. There could well be a base of some sort out there now. Clu's been waiting for this night as long as Flynn has; he might well be marshaling his forces, all in the hope that he can obtain Flynn's disc. It's not a pleasant thought, but it's one he must consider nonetheless.

That's the thing, though--they don't know what Clu is doing. He could still be in the city, waiting for news of their capture. He could have already found out about the fight in the hangar bay, and be in pursuit of them. As much as he's venerated as Creator here on the Grid, Flynn is by no means omniscient. Even though he knows Clu about as well as he knows himself, he can't always guess what he's going to do.

Which brings him to his final thought: he doesn't know what has happened to Quorra. That she was captured after rescuing Sam is a certainty. The sys admin tower is always crawling with Black Guard, and as competent as she is, even Quorra can't fight forever. Flynn is just as certain that she is now a prisoner of Clu. The true question is what Clu is going to do to her.

_She knew what she was doing_ , Flynn reminds himself. _She knew the consequences when she sent Sam away._ Still, the thought of her in Clu's clutches makes his stomach turn. If Clu discovers that she's an Iso, then she's as good as dead. To tell the truth, it's only a matter of time, and a question of whether Clu is going to indulge himself with torture first. Isos could always take more punishment than the average program, and it would be just like Clu to push Quorra to her limit before killing her.

It's all of a piece, really. Everything before them depends on Clu. Whether he's preparing for his invasion, whether he'll prefer torture to outright derezzing. Whether he'll pursue them or merely let those at his possible base deal with them instead. (No. He'll want to do it himself.) Rescuing Quorra seems like only a faint possibility; she might already be dead.

In the end, he sees little point in puzzling over what might be. They'll take things as they come, and--

"Bartik! Creator!" The program Psi's voice cuts into Flynn's thoughts. He opens his eyes and looks up to see Psi at the stairs to the bottom deck

"What's the matter?" Flynn asks as he slowly gets to his feet.

"I found out what the cargo is," Psi replies, looking positively ill.

That gets everyone's attention. They all move towards the stairs and follow Psi down below decks.

The cargo containers are full of programs, all of them in stasis. Flynn hears Sam swear, and to tell the truth, he's thinking of a few choice words himself.

"Now we know what happened to the missing programs," Rilke says softly.

"Indeed," Bartik says.

"Hey," Sam says suddenly. "I recognize this guy." He's pointing at a program through the glass. "He was with me on the, uh, the Recognizer when I first got here. The guard said he was being sent to 'rectify.'"

"What does that mean?" Bartik asks, but Flynn already knows the answer.

"It's Clu," he says. _It's always Clu_. "He can edit programs, change their purpose to suit his needs. You could call it rectification, if you wanted."

"But what purpose could he have for so many programs?"

"He's building an army."

"To overrun the city?"

"No." Flynn bows his head a moment as the weight of all this settles around him. "To invade Earth."

"Earth?" It takes Bartik a moment, but he gets there. "Your system. Your world."

"Yes."

"But..." Psi still sounds confused. "Probably thousands of programs have gone missing, since this all started. Clu could overrun the whole Grid if he wanted to, with numbers like that. How many soldiers could he need?"

"A lot," Flynn replies. "The whole Grid is maybe ten, fifteen thousand square mi--length units. The Earth is 200 _million_. And Clu wants it all."

Silence follows his words. Even Bartik looks stunned. "We're not headed to the Portal," Flynn continues. "I'm sure of that now. There must be a base somewhere over the Sea, ahead of us. These programs still need to be turned into soldiers."

"And we'll end up right in the middle of it," Bartik realizes.

"Users help us," Rilke murmurs.

"There is good news." Flynn smiles grimly.

"Good news?" Sam sounds incredulous.

"A base readying for invasion is bound to have transports. We should be able to steal a couple light jets and make it to the Portal, if Clu isn't already pursuing us."

"After making our way through an army," Bartik says flatly, crossing his arms.

"After making our way through an army," Flynn confirms.


	11. The Rectifier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as ever for your patience.
> 
> Chapter Twelve: Flight to the Portal will be posted on October 16, 2016.

Rinzler waits in the solar sailer docking bay, ready to follow his orders. His master was adamant that he complete his mission this time. This time.

"We can't afford another fiasco like the sys admin tower," his master had said. "You understand, of course. We're so close."

He had nodded. He understood. He understands. His master has waited many cycles for this night, and now everything depends on him.

His orders: obtain the disc of Flynn the Creator. Eliminate any program--or User--who gets in his way.

He isn't sure he can do it.

His loyalty to his master has not wavered. He understands what his master desires--a perfect system, within and without. The ultimate mission tonight is to reach the system of Flynn the Creator, and begin the glorious work of perfecting it as he has perfected this system. Rinzler has long been used as a tool to achieve this goal, a role that has never troubled him.

Until now.

Until he heard the name Tron and Alan. Until these memories awoke in him that he cannot explain.

He is loyal to his master, but now things are different. He is loyal to himself now. He will find out the meaning of these names, these memories, and he will serve his master. But one will inevitably come before the other, and he doesn't know which it will be.

This terrifies him.

He is saved from these awful looping thoughts by the sound of the Rectifier systems announcing the incoming solar sailer and its cargo. He must be on alert now, for if his master is right, Flynn the Creator will be aboard the sailer. All Rinzler must do is obtain his disc and return it to his master. He does not have to capture anyone. All he must do is cut through whatever gets in his path, and get the disc. It's simple.

He fears it won't be. 

He fears what will happen when he sees the User Sam Flynn again. The User who brought him to his knees with a name. If it happens again, he won't be able to explain it away as malfunctions. His master will search his disc more thoroughly, and find where he has hidden the names an the memories, and he will make Rinzler forget.

He does not want to forget. Not anymore. 

Rinzler watches as the sailer docks, his eyes intent on its lower deck, where Flynn the Creator is most likely hiding. There are four standard exits from the sailer into the bay. One of them will hold his target; it's only a matter of which.

He silently moves closer, readying himself for the strike. He slips his discs off the mount on his back and separates them, but he does not ignite them. No need to alert anyone to his presence just yet.

A program emerges from the sailer, disc out and ready. Rinzler does not move; this is not his quarry, and there is no need to strike him down, unless he gets in the way.

This is not how he would have done things before, but it matters little to him. This is the after, and things are different now.

_I fight--_

Two more programs emerge to join the first. They hold no recognition for him. He wonders, just briefly, if his master was wrong. Perhaps the attack in the city was merely the work of dissident programs. Perhaps--

He freezes. The User Sam Flynn has stepped out onto the platform, carrying an ignited, red-rimmed disc in addition to the one on his back. Rinzler waits, dreading the return of the memories--

\--but nothing happens. He relaxes, but only a little. If the User is here, then the Creator must not be far behind. His master knew it would be so.

Two more figures exit the sailer. One of them wears a hooded cloak; the other carries a disc like the others. The cloaked figure is the only one of the group not carrying a disc, though he has one mounted on his back. He turns round, lowering his hood, and Rinzler catches sight of his face--

Even from a distance he recognizes the face of Flynn the Creator, for it is the same and yet different from the face of his master. But there is something else, something more, something about this face that shakes him to his core--

_The new program stops in front of him,_  
_astonished._  
_"Alan?"_  
  
Alan_1  
Alan_1 I have failed you  
  
_"Where did you learn that name?" he asks._  
  
_The program is incredulous, now._  
_"Well, that's your name, isn't it?"_  
  
_"The name of my User."_  
  
Alan_1 my User  
Alan_1  
  
_"I'm remembering all kinds of stuff,"_  
_the program says._  
_"Like my User wants me to go after the MCP."_  
  
MCP  
  
He remembers--

nothing. nothing nothing nothing

_"My User_

Alan_1 my User  
MCP  
Master Control

the Games

_wants that, too."_

He hears that voice again, familiar, echoing from a time before his master. It's the voice of Flynn.

 _"From the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy."_

Did he know Flynn? Why doesn't he remember?

He wants to remember.  
  
_The arena again. The lightcycle.  
"Not bad, eh, Tron?" _

Flynn's voice. Speaking to Tron.

Flynn knows Tron.

Flynn knows.

His discs drop to the floor beside him as he staggers once more. The group doesn't even see him. He watches, helpless and paralyzed, as they hurry out of the docking bay and into the Rectifier proper. He is overcome by the memories, but one thing has become abundantly clear to him.

Flynn knows. Flynn the Creator knows Tron, and now Rinzler knows he must speak to him to find the truth.

**ooo ooo ooo**

No one has caught them yet. They can't possibly hope for that to last.

Clu's base seems practically abandoned, for all that it's home to a massive army. No one patrols the corridors; the few guards they've seen have been from a distance. Something isn't right here.

"We need to stop," Flynn says. "We need to figure out where to go and how to get out of here, before something goes wrong."

"I agree." Bartik, at the head of the group, motions for a halt. "This place is too empty. Here." He points out a large alcove just ahead, and together they file into it. "Creator?"

"Thank you." Flynn opens up at view of the base's code on a nearby wall. It's familiar, almost; he and Clu share certain idiosyncrasies in their work, and he can see where Clu has repurposed code from the city to meet his needs. He coaxes the code into giving him a map of the place, so he can figure out where they need to go. The base, he soon discerns, is actually a massive ship, ready and waiting to move out to the Portal. There's a large gallery where most of the rectified programs stand waiting, but more bays are arranged along the sides of the ship, where the rest of them are gathered. Ready to move out, Flynn realizes grimly.

He finds the hangar bay soon enough, and it's thankfully full of light jets and smaller fliers. The hangar lies below the "mast" of the ship, where it appears a detachable shuttle is docked. There are quite a few guards posted there for some reason, but why--

"Oh no," Flynn breathes.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks.

"Clu's here," he replies. "And I think he might know we're here, too."

"Then we need to leave, now," Bartik says. "Before he turns out this whole base in search of us."

"What about Quorra?" Sam asks suddenly. "Do you think she's here?"

"She might be in the throne ship." Flynn sees where this is going. "We can't afford to rescue her," he says firmly. "The guards on the throne ship might be protecting Clu. Sam, he may have already derezzed her."

Sam looks determined at this, almost defiant, but he doesn't say anything else. Flynn sighs. He wants to hope as much as anyone that Quorra is alive, but they simply don't have the time to rescue her. If they make it out, if she's still alive, then he can save her from Clu from the outside. And then after he solves the problem of Clu and helps the system recover, then maybe... he can realize his dream from twenty years ago, and bring her, an Iso, to the real world.

But he can't do it tonight.

"We'll have to pass by the mast tower to make it to the hangar, but we should be able to make it there without too much trouble. There are a few guards in the hangar, but I think you all can handle them," he adds, glancing at Bartik. "There are light jets in the hangar we can take to the Portal."

"Understood," Bartik says. He turns to his men. "Protect Flynn at all costs. We will not let Clu destroy our chance for a free system, not again."

"Yessir," the three programs reply in unison.

"Then let's go."

The walk to the hangar bay is tense, but ultimately uneventful. Bartik leads the way, following Flynn's directions as he follows behind, flanked on all sides by Bartik's men. Sam brings up the rear. They continue to see no sign of any sort of guard, though they pass above the gallery and see the hundreds of troops left standing there. Sam swears when he sees them, and Bartik grows cold and more silent than usual.

It isn't until they're almost to the hangar that something goes wrong. Bartik glances just behind him, then freezes. "What's the matter?" Flynn asks.

"Rilke and Sam Flynn are gone," Bartik growls.

"What?" He turns to look, and indeed, neither of them are there. And it doesn't take Flynn long at all to realize where they've gone. "They're going to rescue Quorra."

"Who is Quorra?" Bartik asks. "And why would Rilke have gone with him?"

"I can't answer that, but Quorra rescued Sam from Clu. She's a friend of mine." He hesitates, then decides to go all in. "And she's an Iso."

It was Bartik's turn to sigh. "That's why he went along with it. Rilke knew an Iso girl back before the Purge," he explains. "He's always felt guilty about what happened, but I thought..." He shakes his head. "What do we do?"

Flynn sighs. "We go on," he says. "They know what the plan is; if they make it out, they'll know where to meet us."

Bartik nods. "All right. Let's keep moving."

Flynn nods, and they carry on. He silently wishes Sam well, and hopes he hasn't made a mistake by leaving him behind.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Clu examines one of the… devices in his private chambers aboard the Rectifier. The device forces bit by bit deresolution, which he knows from past use is quite painful to the program it’s being used on. It’s perfect for the Iso, who more than deserves to suffer for what her people did to his system. He smiles, but his thoughts are cut off when the door behind him opens suddenly.

It’s Rinzler, and immediately Clu knows something is wrong. Rinzler should not be here; the plan was for him to proceed to the throne ship with Flynn’s disc, and set everything in motion. But here he is, empty-handed.

"Why are you here?" he asks. "I thought I told you to get Flynn's disc."

"Malfunctions," Rinzler rumbles in his rough, staticky voice. "Got past me."

"They got past you?" Clu asks, incredulous. "You're the most powerful program on the Grid thanks to me. And yet you've failed me twice tonight. Because of malfunctions."

Rinzler remains impassive, as always. Clu scowls.

"Give me your disc."

There--there it is, a moment of hesitation, just barely noticeable. Rinzler is hiding something from him. But he hands over his discs without a word. Clu separates them and hands back the non-synced disc before turning his attention to the other. The disc of Tron.

He's had Tron under his thumb for a thousand cycles now. He's been a useful tool of fear, an enforcer matched by no one. And that's not going to change. He opens the disc, ready to examine Rinzler's code more closely than he ever has, so he can stamp out these "malfunctions" once and for all.

The door to Clu's chambers hisses open and a Black Guard stumbles in. "Sir!" he says, standing quickly at attention. "There's fighting in the hangar bay--and the throne ship."

"What." Clu closes out Rinzler's disc and rounds on the guard. "Say that again."

"F-fighting," the guard stammers. "in the hangar and the throne ship."

Clu turns back to Rinzler. "See what you've done?" he says. He shoves the disc into Rinzler's chest; Rinzler takes it, surprised. "Come with me," Clu growls. "And if you fail me again, it'll be the last time."

"Understood," Rinzler says.

"Good. Now come on."

**ooo ooo ooo**

The fighting started not long ago. Quorra's been trying to watch through her cell's small window, but it doesn't afford a great vantage point. One thought it flying though her head: They came back for me.

She's torn between hope and dread. The throne ship has been docked for some time now, but she doesn't know where Clu is. If he's still on board, then her rescuers are doomed; if not... she's scared to hope for freedom, but it seems so close.

**ooo ooo ooo**

There were six guards on the throne ship when they arrived on the lift, but Rilke was more than ready, derezzing one instantly with a well-thrown disc. The logistics programs in the throne ship's back room retreated behind funnel-like shields, leaving them all to fight. Rilke and Sam had since derezzed a guard apiece, but the final three are giving them trouble.

Rilke's doing better than Sam at the moment, for all that he's fighting two to one, but Sam is holding his own. He's one-on-one with a guard right now, using Quorra's disc and his own to block blows from the guard's long polearm. His leg's hurting him a little, but he ignores it in the wave of adrenaline he's riding.

As the guard goes for another block, Sam brings his discs together and rams down hard on the shaft of the polearm. There's a loud crack, and suddenly the staff is falling apart into voxels. The guard tosses the two disintegrating pieces aside and reaches for his disc, but Sam is quicker. He charges the guard, catching him at the waist and shoving him as hard as he can against the wall, stunning him. Then he takes both discs in one hand and slashes him across the chest, ending the fight.

Sam turns to Rilke, who is still holding the two guards off, deftly dodging disc and baton. Sam watches the fight carefully, trying to find an in. Rilke pivots on one foot, putting a guard between himself and Sam, and Sam takes the signal and surges forward. He tackles the guard to the ground, and they struggle, the guard trying to squirm free of Sam, who's basically laying on top of him. Sam elbows the guard in the face, then struggles to get a disc in each hand again.

The guard manages to get an arm free, and he strikes Sam's left arm with his baton. For a terrifying second, Sam's arm goes numb, throbbing and tingling from the strike, but he recovers quickly, slicing at the guard's weapon arm with his right handed disc. The strike is hard enough to start derezzing the guard's arm. Sam pushes himself up, and makes the final blow with one disc to the guard's chest.

As he gets to his feet, he looks up in time to see Rilke derezzing the final guard. They exchange a long look, both of them out of breath from the fight but still standing. "I think that's all of them," Rilke says. "Where do you think she might be?"

"I've got a good idea," Sam replies, staggering forward. With the energy of the fight draining away from him, his leg is crying out again for relief. He grits his teeth and ignores it, limping forward to the corridor that connects the throne ship's two rooms.

The cell door is closed, but there's a familiar face at the window--Quorra.

Her hand flies over her mouth; she looks near tears. Sam grins at her, and she smiles back as Sam punches the panel next to the door to open it. There's a low beep, and nothing happens.

"What?"

"Authorized personnel only," Rilke says dryly. "I think you can override that."

Sam looks at him. "How?"

"You're a User, aren't you? Just change the code."

"Like Dad did? But I can't do that."

"You can try, right?" He glances over his shoulder. "And be quick about it; I doubt our presence here has gone unnoticed."

"Right," Sam says. "Right." He places one hand on the door, trying to remember what he'd seen his father do. Feeling silly, he gives his hand a twist. To his surprise, there's a light tingle beneath his hand and an open panel appears, showing glittering lines of code. That he can't read.

There's a thunk from the other room.

"Lift's going down," Rilke says. "Hurry."

Sam scrolls through the code, at a loss. He doesn't know what to do with this; he doesn't have the same innate knowledge that his father seems to have. Finally, frustrated, he slashes across the code with one hand.

The cell door immediately falls to pieces. Sam laughs, and then he's swept into a brief embrace. "Thank you," Quorra says quietly. "I didn't think Flynn would risk coming for me--"

"That's why he sent me instead," Sam answers.

"And we need to get out of here, now," Rilke adds. "Come on."

They hurry to the throne room, where they're afforded a view of the hangar bay below. Sam can see a whole fleet of light jets, all red-rimmed save for two. "They must be waiting for us. How are we gonna get down there?"

"Here," Rilke says, throwing Sam something from the wall. "It's a chute pack. We can break through the window and glide down.” He crosses to the opposite wall, where another pack hangs. “There's only two, though, so you're going to have to go double."

"That's fine," Quorra says as Sam puts the pack on his shoulders.

"I've done tandem drops before," Sam adds. "Ready to hold on?" he asks Quorra. She nods.

"Good," Rilke says. He walks up to the picture window and strikes it with his disc. It shatters instantly, and Rilke uses his disc to force open a hole big enough for them to jump through. "Let's go." He takes a brief running start and jumps through the window.

"Can you activate the chute for me?" Sam asks.

"I've got it," Quorra says.

"All right." He picks her up, ignoring the protests from his bad leg as he takes a limping dash up to the drop and leaps.

They're falling. Sam feels the chute pack open, and their descent slows, though not by much. He sees Rilke just ahead, readying himself for a landing. Their landing is not going to be as graceful, Sam thinks, what with his leg and their awkward tandem position. No time to worry about it now, because here comes the ground...

They land in an awkward heap, but it's all right. Quorra helps Sam to his feet, and puts her arm around his shoulder to help him run for one of the white-lined light jets, where Sam can now see his father waiting for them, shouting at them to hurry.

They all stagger into the light jet together. Sam collapses into the first chair he sees, leaving Quorra to take the pilot's seat next to Flynn. Before he settles back, he remembers something, but Flynn cuts across his thoughts when he speaks.

"Don't ever do that again," he says. 

"Or what?" Sam asks with a grin. "You'll ground me?"

"It's not funny," replies Flynn, hiding half a grin himself. "I—damn it Sam, I thought I was gonna lose you again."

"I know." Sam sobers. "But I couldn't just leave her behind. Here," he says to Quorra, leaning forward to tap her shoulder with her disc. "This is yours."

"Oh." She takes the disc and mounts it on her back. "Thank you. And thank you for coming for me."

"Sure," Sam says, smiling.

"But now we need to get out of here," Flynn puts in. "You ready to fly?"

"I can do this," Quorra says with a sidelong smile. She flips switches on the dash, and the light jet rumbles to life. As they taxi around to the runway, Flynn adds, "Remember, it's all in the wrist."

Quorra laughs, and Sam laughs with her, hearing his dad's old arcade quip for the first time in years. Everything seems like it's going to be all right now. They're finally, finally on their way home.

**ooo ooo ooo**

They arrive in the throne ship to find the guards derezzed, the cell empty, and the grand window shattered. His master steps forward to the edge, and beyond him Rinzler can see two light jets taking off towards the Portal.

His master's rage is almost palpable. Rinzler hangs back, a disc in each hand, all too aware of how close he was to his doom. To forgetting again.

He does not want to forget. 

He awaits orders he is not sure he will be able to follow. He and his master both want the same thing--to capture Flynn the Creator. For different ends, true, but it's all the same. Isn't it?

He can follow his master and his own purposes.

He thinks.

He hopes.

_I fight--_

His master turns back from the window, his face unreadable. "Let's go," he growls.

Rinzler nods and puts his discs away, and pulls out the light flier baton he keeps on his person. He hears the three Black Guard behind him do the same.

Without any other word, the five of them leap from the window and take off after the jets, in pursuit of their ultimate quarry.


	12. Flight to the Portal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for my tardiness.
> 
> Chapter Thirteen: Face to Face will be posted on Sunday, October 30, 2016. Thanks as ever for reading.

Rinzler flies point to his master, waiting for the signal to go after one of the jets.

He hopes he will not be tasked with taking Flynn out. He can't shoot him down. Not when Flynn has all the answers. Not when he's so close to the truth.

Alan_1  
_"--eh, Tron?"_

I fight--

The signal comes--he's to follow the jet on the left. He dips down his flier and moves in closer, with one of the Black Guard following him. He opens fire, aiming at the wings rather than the engines and sometimes shooting wide. The Black Guard will not notice. He hopes his master will not, either.

He hopes this jet holds the other programs, the ones he did not recognize. He hopes he does not have to shoot down Flynn, or else betray his master and himself.

The jets both turn on their light trails and begin evasive maneuvers. Rinzler and his point do the same, and now they have return fire to deal with as well. He weaves and dodges with practiced ease, hoping again, hoping desperately, that this is not the jet carrying Flynn.

Flynn has all the answers. Flynn knows Tron.

At last, he is afforded and opportunity to shoot ahead and spiral around the jet, trying to trap it within his light trails. He swings above the cockpit and looks up...

...to see not Flynn, but one of the other programs. He relaxes visibly, and falls back to tail the jet again, this time having no compunctions about shooting it out of the sky and into the Sea. His ruse is maintained if he can shoot them down. Clu will have no doubts about him, and perhaps he can use that to get close to Flynn.

He glances over at the jet he now knows holds the Creator. It's holding on, and though the two Black Guard are gone, they are being pursued relentlessly by Clu.

He hopes Flynn makes it. He hopes he can follow him. He hopes he can get his answers without betraying his master, but he's not sure that he can.

****

ooo ooo ooo

****

Sam unwittingly took the gunner's chair when he boarded the light jet, but he's been holding his own. Quorra's done an excellent job of piloting them through this sudden maze of towering rock, and in the process Sam has taken out two of their pursuers. The last, however, is a flier lined with orange, which Sam knows means only one thing--Clu.

Sam doesn't quail in the face of this. He's past that, now. Clu can't do anything to him in here (except shoot them down, a voice of reason notes). And unlike every other time tonight, Sam can finally fight back. He tracks Clu's movements with his guns, firing as constantly as he's able, hoping to get a few shots in here and there.

That's the thing. He's not afraid to hope, now. They're almost there. He saw how close the Portal was getting before his seat swung back to put him at the guns. They're going to make it. This nightmare is going to end, and he'll have his father back at last.

It's almost too much to hope for. 

He hopes anyway.

****

ooo ooo ooo

****

The comm crackles; it's Bartik. "We can't hold on against this," he says. "We're falling back."

"It's all right," Flynn comms back. "We're almost there. You did the best you could."

"Remember our agreement, Flynn," Bartik replies. "I will hold you to it, if you ever return."

"Understood," Flynn says. "Good luck to you."

"And to you. Out."

The comm snaps off. "There goes our air support," Flynn mutters.

"We're almost there, like you said," Quorra reminds him. "We can make it." She says this even as she glances at the gunner's view to see Clu and Rinzler on their tail. She hopes Sam's giving it all he's got; they're going to need it against those two, though from her view Rinzler seems to be hanging back. Odd; from what she’s heard, he’s supposed to be even more relentless than Clu.

She can see the entrance to the Portal already, a haven perched precariously in a large column of rock. Quorra guns the throttle a little, putting on whatever speed she can find, for she knows Clu and Rinzler are still tailing them. The shots behind them grow louder, so she pulls another tight maneuver around a crag.

"I need you to do something for me," Flynn says quietly.

She spares a quick glance at him. He holds his disc lightly in both hands. "What is it? Why do you have your--?"

"Make sure Sam gets out," he replies. "Go with him, if you can. You'll need this." He indicates the disc. "Only the admin disc can let you through. I'll need yours, too, in case the worst should happen."

In case reintegration is necessary. She swallows, then lets out a long breath. They have spoken of this before. She will do what is needed. She glances back at Sam, still caught up in defense, then leans forward in her seat a little. "Do it," she says. "Before Sam sees."

The switch is made. Quorra keeps on a course for the Portal, evading as often as she can. When Sam cheers and says he’s shot down Clu, and that Rinzler has gone after him, she keeps a straight course for the end and begins the landing procedures.


	13. Face to Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again for the slight tardiness.
> 
> Chapter Fourteen: Flynn Lives will be posted on Sunday, November 13, 2016.

It is only luck that Rinzler is below when his master is shot out of the sky, and only his desire to keep up appearances that makes him move to catch him. The flier dips and groans under their combined weight, but Rinzler angles it upward, climbing gently to continue their pursuit of the light jet. Here, at least, their interests are aligned. As for what happens after, he doesn't know.

The jet is coming in for a landing at the Portal. Rinzler fires off a few more shots, but it's pointless. Instead, he angles up harder, hoping they'll reach the platform in time--but not too soon. He doesn't know how this is going to go. If his master reaches Flynn first, then he will never know the truth. But if he can time it just right--

He can already see them climbing out of the jet, moving towards the stairs that lead up to the Portal itself.

He's been here before.  
But when? 

With a final mighty groan, the flier sails over the edge of the platform before it gives out and tumbles downwards, taking them with it. They land in a heap, and his master is up before Rinzler is, but Rinzler still stands in time to see the Creator. He sees his face, and recognizes it, and hears his voice, shouting to the User and the Isomorph to go ahead. He staggers just behind his master, the memories threatening to overtake him, and then he hears the Creator shout one last thing as he rushes towards the stairs.

"It's Clu and Tron! Hurry!"

Tron.

Tron. 

_"It's Clu and_

_Tron."_

Is it--

Could it--

Could _he_ \--

Alan_1  
oh my User

He collaspes to his knees, the words flying through his head, overpowering him.

Tron  
Alan_1  
_"The name of my User."_

Alan_1 is  
Alan_1  
my User  
_my User_

"Alan_1, I have failed you."

I fight--  
I fight for the--

_"That's Tron,  
He fights for the--"_

"I fight for the--" He knows the next word. He knows, he _knows--_

Users.  
Users bleed.  
Programs derezz. 

He knows this.

Alan_1  
my User  
I fight for the--

More voices. More memories. He is overcome.

_"Did we make it?"_  
Flynn asks, exhausted.  
"Yeah."  
"Hurray for our side." 

Our side. The side of what? Of programs and Users? "I fight for the--"

_"--he calls to me. Please, may I enter?"  
"All that is visible must grow beyond itself, and extend into the realm of the invisible." _

He knows the truth. He can feel it. He _knows_ now.

"I fight for the Users," he mutters, getting to his feet. "I fight for the Users." His voice is clearer now, clearer than it's been in a thousand cycles. He knows the truth now. He knows who he _is._ And he knows now what he must do to set things right.

Full of fresh determination, Tron rushes up the stairs, hoping he will not be too late.

**ooo ooo ooo**

They're almost home.

Sam limps up the stairs to the Portal, following Quorra as closely as he can. She's got her disc out, ready to fight in case Clu or Rinzler should appear. His father called him Tron for some reason, but that's not important. He's almost to the end of the staircase, and he can finally hear Flynn coming up behind him.

The stairs open out on a large, windy platform. A narrow, rail-less bridge connects this to a second platform, bathed in a swirling, unearthly glow: the Portal.

"Come on, Sam," Quorra urges, and he hurries after her, across the bridge and towards that column of light.

They've made it. He can't believe they've made it. After all of tonight's trials, they're finally going home.

He doesn't see the orange disc scream in from nowhere. He feels it, though, when it cuts deeply into his side. He screams, staggers, nearly falls off the bridge but for Quorra catching him. He feels himself being dragged, sees the brightness of the Portal closing around him, and realizes his father is not there.

He looks and blearily sees Flynn standing on the bridge just ahead of him. He tries to call up the energy to shout his name, but someone else does it first.

**ooo ooo ooo**

"Flynn!"

It's Clu.

Flynn, torn between his son and his creation, turns around slowly. Clu stands at the end of the bridge, holding his bloody disc, looking grim. There's an undercurrent of rage in his expression. "Clu," Flynn says.

"This is your fault, Flynn," Clu shouts. "You didn't stick to the plan!"

The plan. Flynn has to stop himself from laughing sadly. "The plan was bogus right from the start," he replies.

"You wanted the perfect system!" Clu howls, taking a step forward. Flynn takes a step back, another step closer to his son, to home, to freedom. "Everything I've done has been according to a plan, to your plan! Until you strayed from it."

"There's no such thing as a perfect system," Flynn says. "Even this one. I didn't see that back then. Perfection is... it's impossible, unknowable. I didn't realize that until it was too late. I'm... I'm sorry, Clu."

He knows it's not enough. How can a simple apology make up for the mistakes he's made? How could it be enough to dissipate cycles upon cycles of rage? But he wants Clu to understand, to see what he's been missing for so long.

"You think that's enough?" Clu demands. "After all I've done, and you say it's impossible?"

"You did what I told you to do," Flynn admits. "It's my fault for not speaking to you when things changed. We were never gonna make a perfect system. And that's okay. This place was always going to be changing, never staying still. And that its own kind of perfection, don't you see?"

"That's a _paradox_ ," Clu spits. He ignites his disc again, takes another step forward. "You're a fool, Flynn. And I'm going to prove you wrong." He raises his disc--

\--and falls to the ground as he is tackled from behind by a program not lit with red, but bluish-white--

"Flynn!" yells Tron, and it is truly _Tron._ "Get out of here!" He struggles with Clu, knocking his disc out of his hand and into the abyss below. "Hurry!"

Flynn backs up slowly, not believing his eyes. Quorra is calling to him, but he doesn't turn. He just keeps walking until he feels the light of the Portal on his back.

Clu and Tron are fighting still, quite near the edge of the bridge. Clu punches Tron and is starting to gain the upper hand--

\--and then Flynn sees no more, for the light closes in around him and reality comes crashing in like a wave.


	14. Flynn Lives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late. As a special treat, you're getting the rest of the fic in one go. Enjoy it.

Alan knows he has better things to be doing at one in the morning on a Saturday night than driving over to the arcade. He could be in bed—something Lora had pointed out to him over an hour ago when she’d turned in herself, while he’d still been nursing a cold mug of tea. As he takes the exit off towards Mead Street he thinks about being back home, asleep or at least drowsing next to Lora, not concerned with anything much but the continued damage control for OS12 back at Encom. And even that he’s not _too_ concerned about.

But here he is, pulling his car around the corner and parking by one of the long defunct meters in front of Flynn’s Arcade. This could have waited until morning, he thinks. Proper morning. Morning when he’s not the only guy over fifty in this city still awake.

But then again, Roy had called him earlier. He’d wanted to know if Alan had investigated the page from the arcade yet. Yes, they’d agreed to let Sam check it out first, but it had been a couple of days. If the page was something important, something _really_ important, then time was of the essence.

So Alan had sat up with that mug of tea, staring at his old pager and wondering if it was crazy to start hoping again. Sitting in his car outside the arcade, he pulls the pager out of his coat pocket and stares at it again, turning it over in his hand, the same thoughts running through his head. It may very well have been nothing, he thinks. He knows Roy had been running an… event of sorts with the Flynn Lives people that night, the night he got the page, but it might have been a coincidence.

Roy would hear nothing of that, though, he knew, and Alan was the only one with keys to the arcade. 

Eventually he shakes his head, pockets the pager, and climbs out of his car. It can’t hurt just to look.

He’s a little surprised to see Sam’s motorcycle (or one of them, anyway) parked out front. Given his attitude the other night, Alan hadn’t expected him to even come over here. But he has, apparently, if the keys in the lock and the music threading eerily through the half open door are any indication. Alan puts the keys in his pocket with the pager and walks through the arcade’s doors just as the final chords of some synthesizer heavy hit die away.

He glances around. Someone—Sam, he presumes—has turned everything on. The seemingly endless rows of arcade games fill the silence between the jukebox songs with a cacophonous symphony of chiptune melodies and sound effects. In spite of the dust and grime, the place is almost a time capsule, as though the locked-up doors have been preserving that moment back in ’89 when everything seemed like it would be okay.

The jukebox whirrs, and the next song starts up. “ _Carry on, my wayward son…_ ” Alan has to grin. This song was getting to be an oldie even back in ’89, but Flynn liked to listen to the best…

He looks around again. He’s done this before, this searching up and down the rows of games, the climbing up to the old apartment. Looking for clues, for some sign of something he’s missed for the last twenty-one years. It’s only when he comes back down to the main floor that he realizes something _is_ missing—Sam. Alan’s been all over the arcade and hasn’t seen him once.

“Sam?” he calls out over the din of Kansas and Atari.

There’s a low creak and clank behind him, almost in response. He turns and spots, at the end of the row, one of the old Tron machines. He steps forward, watching as the heavy arcade cabinet swings forward like a hinged door, revealing a smaller door behind it, and a human figure peering out at him.

It’s not Sam. It’s a young woman dressed mostly in black, her skin so pale it seems to glow in the dim light of the arcade. She is staring at him, frozen, her eyes wide. She has a cut on her forehead. It’s bleeding, the blood trickling slowly down the side of her face, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She stares at him, saying nothing, not even moving, as though she’s shocked he even exists.

Alan’s confusion breaks the silence. “Who the hell are you?”

She turns and runs and Alan, stupidly, follows her.

The door leads to a dark and narrow staircase. He stumbles on the first step and curses under his breath as he fumbles in his pocket for his phone, which is a better flashlight than nothing. He can hear the woman running ahead as he reaches the bottom of the stairs. There’s a hallway here, dimly lit, but it dead ends in a pair of double doors marked as the arcade’s electrical subroom. There’s nowhere else she could have run.

“Hey!” He walks towards the doors, ready to dial 911 if he needs to—

\--and then one of the doors opens and a man steps out and Alan stops dead in shock.

“…Flynn?”

He’s older—of course he is, why wouldn’t he be? Still, it’s a shock to see him bearded and gray-haired, his face marked by all the gentle signs of aging.

“Alan.” His voice is older, too, lower, huskier.

Alan finds his voice again. “Flynn. I don’t—where have you—“

“Can you call 911?” he asks, suddenly urgent. “Sam’s hurt.” There’s a pause, and Alan’s about to reply when Flynn speaks again. “I promise I’ll explain everything later.”

Alan remembers the last time Flynn said that to him, in the dim light of his living room after waxing poetic for an hour on almost every branch of science and philosophy Alan had ever heard of. A few days later, he disappeared, and now he’s back, standing in front of Alan like nothing has changed.

But things _have_ changed, and when he meets Flynn’s eyes he can see that they’ve changed for him, too. He’s not the same man who disappeared all those years ago. He hasn’t just aged on the surface.

So Alan swallows and nods a little, and Flynn nods in return, as though they’re agreeing, just like they did way back when, that there won’t be any questions asked, at least not right now. As Flynn turns and heads back into the subroom, the door swinging shut behind him, Alan glances at his phone to make sure he has a signal (he does, surprisingly), then dials 911. 

He spends a few minutes on the phone with the dispatcher, explaining several times where he is. He doesn’t know what’s happened to Sam, though, and he can’t say anything about it, and he’s not sure he wants to walk through the door and find out. From Kevin’s tone of voice he can only assume it’s bad.

He has to go through the door when he gets off the phone, though, and what he sees when he steps through is shocking in so many different ways that for half a second he doesn’t know how to react.

First: the room is grimy and the furniture covered with what he is certain is twenty-one years’ worth of dust, because everything from the clutter along the walls to the futon in the corner, not to mention the massive desktop terminal in the center of the room, tells him that Flynn was using this room as a covert office long before he disappeared.

Second: Sam is sprawled on the floor, breathing heavily but otherwise not moving much. The young woman Alan chased down here in the first place is kneeling next to him, the cut on her forehead still bleeding, and her pale hands darkened by something she is pressing to Sam’s side. She is speaking to him quietly, saying his name over and over, and Alan can’t tell if Sam is even reacting to her.

Third: Kevin is barely paying this any mind. He stands at the computer in the middle of the room (one of the old touch screen terminals from Encom’s early days, one of many products that had helped them get a leg up in the industry all those years ago), typing away on the desktop, muttering under his breath a little.

Alan says the first thing that pops into his head. “Flynn, what’s going on here?” He steps forward, moving carefully around Sam and the woman, approaching the desk and Flynn, as a slow burn of anger starts to bubble inside him. 

“I’m trying to keep this from getting any worse,” Flynn replies, not even looking up from the terminal. “Is someone coming for Sam?”

“I—yeah, they’re sending an ambulance,” Alan replies, thrown slightly by the question. He finds his balance in the conversation again and plows on, “But Flynn—where have you _been_?”

“Gone,” he replies. “I’ll explain later, Alan, I promise, but right now I’ve got to deal with this.”

“What _is_ this?” Alan asks, stepping closer to Flynn to get a better look at the desktop screen. It’s a mess of code right now, and for half a second Alan thinks he’s a bit rustier than he remembered, because he can’t make heads or tails of the lines of code scrolling quickly across the screen as Flynn works. “I… what is this?” he asks again.

“My secret project,” Flynn says bitterly. “And it’s all gonna fall apart here in a second if I’m not careful…”

There’s a gasp behind them, and Alan glances over his shoulder to see the young woman staring at them both, her eyes suddenly wide and her expression fearful. “Flynn—can he—he can’t get out, can he?”

“No.” Flynn shakes his head. “No, I closed the portal before he could try and piggyback after us. I’m just trying to make sure he doesn’t destroy everything just to spite me.”

“… could he do that?”

“If the mood took him,” Flynn replies shortly. Alan doesn’t have the slightest clue what either of them are talking about, and he’s about to ask Flynn point blank to _explain_ when Flynn continues speaking. “I’m trying to isolate him from the rest of the system, get him locked into a loop so I can leave him when they get here for Sam.”

The woman nods as though she understands this (Alan certainly doesn’t), then looks back down at Sam, who is still breathing, but not moving much. “Is Sam going to be all right?” she asks quietly.

Flynn doesn’t pause in his work on the terminal, but Alan sees him bow his head a little lower, and hears him sigh quietly. “I don’t know,” he says. “I… don’t know. Just… keep pressure on the wound.”

She nods.

“Flynn,” Alan says, and he pauses, because he’s not actually sure what to say next. There are a million questions bouncing around inside his head, and he has no idea which one to ask. Where has he been all this time? What happened to Sam? Who’s the woman? What the hell is this mess on the computer? And why has he suddenly decided to come back now?

He doesn’t know which one he’s going to ask when he opens his mouth again, but that doesn’t matter, because the sound of sirens in the distance cuts him off. The ambulance.

Flynn looks up from the computer for the first time since Alan’s entered the room. He looks at Alan. “Can you make sure they get down here?”

“Of course.” Because he cares about Sam as much as Flynn does, and because they’re friends, even after all this time. Why wouldn’t he?

They nod to each other again, another silent understanding reached, and Alan hurries out of the subroom and back up to the arcade to meet the paramedics.

**ooo ooo ooo**

The graveyard shift administrator at the hospital gives them a conference room to wait in after Alan manages to discreetly explain the situation, and after the young woman (whom Flynn finally introduced as Quorra on the drive over) has been seen by a nurse and been given a couple of small bandages for the gash on her forehead. The room is small, but it’s close to the cafeteria, and it’s away from the prying eyes of general admission, which is what Alan really wanted in the first place. Encom has already been in the news this week for the disaster of the OS12 leak, and the return of its long wayward CEO is almost certainly going to be cause for a media firestorm.

“I’ll make sure someone lets you know when he’s out of surgery,” the administrator says, nodding at all of them, his eyes lingering on Flynn.

“Thanks,” Alan says. The man nods again and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

It’s the start of a long night.

For the first hour or so, nobody says anything. Alan doesn’t really know what to say, and just from looking at him he can tell that Flynn is too busy worrying about Sam. He doesn’t know what to make of Quorra, though. She sits cross legged on one end of the table, her hands resting at her ankles, though she occasionally raises one hand to touch her forehead.

Finally, just for want of something to say to break the silence, Alan says to her, quietly, “You don’t want to mess with that too much. It won’t heal properly.”

She stares at him a moment, then lets her hand drop back to her ankles, nodding before she looks away again, her cheeks deeply flushed.

Silence falls once more, and after about five minutes Alan decides he has to do _something_. He steps out into the corridor and pulls out his phone to call Lora. He doesn’t know how long he’s going to be here waiting to find out about Sam, and he knows she’d want to know about Sam, and probably about Flynn, too.

The conversation is difficult, partly because he starts it off by saying he’s at the hospital rather than taking a moment to explain what’s happened. He does manage to get around to it, and Lora says she’ll come, because she cares about Sam as much as he does, and then he mentions, very quietly, that Flynn’s here.

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and for a second he wonders if the call’s dropped but then she says, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s him.”

“All right. I’ll be there in a bit.”

He goes down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee then, and before he heads back into the conference room he checks the latest headlines on his phone, out of habit more than anything else. There doesn’t seem to be anything very new, but then he spots a small, unobtrusive line of text: “Missing Encom CEO possibly seen in L.A. hospital.”

The story isn’t much, mostly speculation padded out with assurances that the press were trying to confirm what they’d heard, but it is enough. Alan rubs his forehead. It’s going to get started now, and he can only imagine what kinds of frantic calls he’s going to have to field from Mackey and the rest of the board when they see the news in a few hours, not to mention the press that are going to descend on the hospital, because even if Kevin Flynn isn’t suddenly back, the fact that his son is hospitalized is good for a story if nothing else.

And if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, he doesn’t know much more than the press does. Flynn’s back, yes, but where has he _been_ all this time? Why did he come back now? What exactly happened to Sam? 

He sighs and takes a long sip of coffee. Maybe they can have a heart to heart once Sam gets out of surgery and they’ve got some space to breathe. Because it’s started now, and God only knows when it will calm down again.

When he returns to the conference room, Flynn is slowly pacing along the length of the table, while Quorra hasn’t moved at all, though she looks up when the door opens.

“Lora’s coming over,” he says as he sits down, and Flynn pauses and turns towards him.

“Lora?” He’s smiling a little, and he nods as he goes back to pacing. “That’s… good. Good.” Alan doesn’t say anything, but sips his coffee quietly. “Sam’s out of surgery,” Flynn adds, almost as an afterthought. “Still in serious condition, but… they’re working on it.” He lets out a long breath. “They think he’s gonna make it. Probably.”

Alan nods. “Good. Good. Thank God.” 

“Yeah.”

Silence reigns once more. They’ve got so much to say to one another, Alan thinks, and yet… 

He drinks his coffee, in the silence, checking his phone occasionally to see how the “missing Encom CEO” story is developing (so far it isn’t, to his relief), but it isn’t until Lora arrives about twenty minutes later that any conversation starts.

She looks very much like she just threw on some clothes and headed out the door, but Alan doesn’t particularly care. He’s almost relieved to see her, because so far she’s the only thing that makes sense tonight. They embrace quickly and after Lora pecks him on the cheek she asks, quite seriously, “How’s Sam?”

“Out of surgery, at least,” he replies. “He’s still serious, but they think he’s going to make it.”

“Thank God.”

And she turns to Flynn, who had stopped pacing as soon as Lora entered the room. “Is it really you?” 

Flynn smiles. “Afraid so.”

And Lora grins and laughs, a quiet ghost of a laugh. “I can’t even… Damn it, Flynn, I don’t know if I should hug you or slap you.”

“You can do both if you want to,” he replies, his smile fading into something sadder. “Thank you for coming, Lora.”

“Of course, it’s no problem. It’s Sam. But…” There’s a pause that hangs in the air and seems to stretch on for forever, and then she asks, “Where have you been all this time?”

Flynn doesn’t say anything to that. He pulls out one of the chairs around the table and sits down. “It’s… kind of a long story.”

“Don’t start like that, Flynn,” Alan says. “You’ve been saying you’d explain all night, and we’ve got all night. So explain.”

Flynn doesn’t even try to argue with that. He just bows his head, still smiling that sad smile. “You’re right,” he says, and looks back at Alan and Lora. “I’m sorry for… everything.” He pauses, and Alan can see that he’s thinking. His smile grows a little wider, and then he begins the story.

“Do you remember that night when we broke into Encom?”


	15. Sunrise

Quorra sits at the table with her arms folded in front of her, and her chin resting on her arms. A foam cup of coffee sits in front of her. They had all gone to get coffee after Flynn had explained to the Users--to Alan and Lora that she was an Iso. A program brought to the Users' world. They stared at her, and she had blushed, and then Lora had suggested they all get coffee.

She tasted the coffee a little, and she's decided she doesn't like it. It smells nice enough, but the taste is far too bitter for her to enjoy. So she's let the cup sit. It isn't warm anymore, but that doesn't matter to her. She's far more fascinated by the little foam cup. It looks like it's made of little pellets all crammed together, none of them the same shape. There's no uniform pattern created; it's a mad hodgepodge like she's never seen. Something like this would never exist on the Grid.

It's strange. No, _everything_ is strange. It's nighttime here, so she has been struck, again and again, by how similar this world is to the Grid. The lights on the streets and the cars are most similar, but even the stark indoor lighting here reminds her of old places in the city. And yet, things are _so_ different here. There was color, life, randomness like she'd never known on the Grid. It had been a dream to come here, to see all the things she had read about in Flynn's books. She's living it now, and yet she's almost never felt so alone.

She'd come to terms with being the last Iso on the Grid. It had taken many, many cycles, but she'd been at peace with it. Those feelings are creeping up on her again, now that she's the only Iso--the only kind of program at all--on the planet Earth. She doesn't know what to do, what to be--and all Flynn's assurances that she doesn't have to _be_ anything here seem hollow now. How can she be whatever she wants if she doesn't know how to be anything at all?

She sighs and bites the inside of her lip. She glances at Flynn, who stares wistfully into his own cup of coffee. She turns her gaze to the wall of covered windows on her right, and it's there she sees a finger of golden light stretching across the wall.

"It's sunrise," she said suddenly, sitting up.

"What?" Alana asks groggily.

"Sunrise," Quorra says again. She gets up and rushes towards the windows. It takes her a moment to figure out how the blinds open, but once she does, they _all_ go up, one after the other. The windows afford a view of the parking lot, but beyond that are trees, and more buildings, and faintly in the distance, mountains. And above them, the fierce golden glare of the sun.

Quorra grins as she takes it all in. It's beautiful. All of it. The buildings, too. The trees, the mountains, the wispy clouds in the pale sky, they all come together to create this--this _majesty_. This perfect morning, unlike anything she's ever seen on the Grid. It fills her up with a warmth she can't explain, and she's hopeful for the first time since arriving here. She's not going to be alone. She'll have Flynn, and Sam, and maybe even Alan and Lora.

Everything's going to be all right.

She watches the sunrise until the sun fully crests the mountains. "Are they all like that?" she asks.

"Yeah," Flynn says from behind her. "They are."

**ooo ooo ooo**

The phone call Alan's been dreading comes at 6am. His phone rings and buzzes on the conference table, lighting up with the name Mackey on the screen. "Oh, great," he mutters.

"Who is it?" Lora asks.

"Mackey." He answers the phone. "Hello?"

"Is it true?" Mackey demands.

"Good morning to you, too, Rick."

"Is it true?" he repeats.

Alan sighs. "You're going to have to be a bit more specific. A lot's happened in the last six hours."

"You know what I mean, Bradley," Mackey snaps. "Is it true? Is Kevin Flynn alive?"

"I certainly hope so, since he's been sitting next to me for the last several hours."

"Cut the crap," Mackey says. "Where's he been all this time? Why'd he come back now?"

"I don't know where he's been," Alan replies carefully. He's not fond of lying, but Flynn's story isn't his truth to tell. "Or why he came back now. It just happened that way."

"It's suspicious," Mackey says. "First this whole fiasco with OS12, and now Kevin Flynn's come back? I don't like the timing. Do you know what this could do to our stock numbers?"

"Haven't the foggiest. Sam's doing fine, by the way," he adds. "I'm sure you heard about him being rushed into surgery at two o'clock this morning."

"The kid?" Mackey sounds confused at the sudden change in subject. "I couldn't care less what mess he's gotten himself into, not after what he pulled the other night. Besides, what's this I hear about a girl showing up with Flynn?"

"That's not important," Alan replies, a little defensively. "She's a young woman who would like her privacy to be maintained, and that's all you need to know. I'll pass on your well wishes to Sam, by the way," he adds coolly. "If that's all you needed, Richard, I'll let you go. I'm sure Claire can write up a good press release about the news. If it'll keep the press off our backs here, I'd appreciate it."

"Of course." Mackey doesn't sound courteous in the least. "We'll talk again later, Bradley."

"Of course." Alan hangs up before Mackey can say anything more. He sighs again, rubbing his eyes with one hand under his glasses. "Remind me to stay on Mackey's good side."

Lora puts a hand on his arm. "What happened this time?"

"Who is Mackey?" asks Flynn, looking confused.

"He's chairman of the board at Encom," Alan replies. "And he doesn't like taking 'I don't know' for an answer. He wants to know why you're back now," he adds to Flynn. "And he was interested in Quorra as well."

"I heard what you told him," Flynn says. "I appreciate it." He frowns. "Sam's not involved on the board at all?"

"Not anymore," Alan says. "He got a bit disillusioned when he saw how the sausage got made. I've been trying to get him back in for years--he could do some real good for us--but the closest he gets to the company is pulling his annual prank."

Flynn smiles faintly at this. "Really."

"Yeah."

"What was this year's prank?"

"It was a couple days ago, actually. He released Encom's brand new OS online for free." Alan can't even hide his smile. "I can't even be that mad at him about it. The way Mackey's run things, there's no student or home editions anymore, it's the professional price point all the way. Mackey says people will pay for professional quality, and they do, but..." He laughs hollowly. "Sometimes I wonder why I've stayed on there for so long. But I suppose somebody's got to remind them of Encom's roots. Walter Gibbs is long gone."

"Yeah." Flynn lets out a long breath. "I'm not even sure I should get involved again. I've got enough to deal with between Clu and rebuilding the system, not to mention... living, again. Helping Quorra"--she looks up at him and he smiles at her--"being there for Sam. Maybe I can convince him... I don't know." He chuckles. "I've been doing nothing for so long, I don't know what to do with myself."

"You'll figure it out," Alan says, and he believes it. Flynn was always a quick study, and he has faith that he'll figure out how to live in this world again, even if he doesn't join up with Encom.

They sit in silence for a little while, and then Lora suggests that they head down to the cafeteria for breakfast. "I've been up all night worrying about my Flynn boys," she says with a grin. "I'm going to need more than another cup of coffee if I'm going to get through today."

"I don't," Quorra says quietly. "Coffee tastes horrible."

Flynn and Alan both laugh. "Q," Flynn says, "did you even put anything in yours?" He leans over to look into the styrofoam cup that's been sitting in front of her all night. "It tastes better with cream and sugar than it does black."

"Really?" She seems genuinely interested. "Then why isn't it made that way?"

"Some people like it black," Alan puts in. "I know it helps wake me up some mornings."

"I think I can see that," Quorra replies. "Do you like it that way?"

"Not really," he replies, smiling. "But it's gotten me through plenty of early mornings."

"Not that this isn't fascinating," Lora says, "but I really need something to eat. Let's go."

They all stand up one by one, and continue chatting about coffee all the way to the cafeteria.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Sam wakes to blurry light above him. His side aches dully and his leg throbs a little, but not like they did before. He's in a haze of sedatives and painkillers, aware that he's lying down, in a bed, in a bright white room. The blurry light above him resolves into a pair of long fluorescent bulbs against a drop tile ceiling. It takes him a moment to realize he's not on the Grid anymore. He's in a hospital room, hooked up to what feels like half a dozen beeping machines, but _he's not on the Grid anymore._

He glances around the room. There is a window to his right, with honest to god _sunlight_ pouring through it. He can see the sky and even some clouds. It's _over_. He's _home_.

Tears rise in his eyes. He tries to blink them away, but one trickles through anyway. He's home, he's home, he's home... He doesn't remember much of his last moments on the Grid, just pain and fear and longing, with Quorra holding him and whispering his name over and over. Everything after that was light and darkness and pain, and now it's over.

He raises one hand, the one that doesn't have an IV in it, to wipe the tears from his eyes. He didn't think it was possible to miss _sunlight_ , but after all those hours on the Grid, he does. And just seeing it right now is all the proof he needs that it's over. He's not running for his life, he's not being kept in the dark, he's _here_ , and he's _alive_ , and there is sunlight coming through the window. And for a while, that's all that matters.

A nurse comes in eventually. "Good to see you awake, Mr. Flynn," she says, checking his chart before going to check his IV bags. "We didn't think you were going to make it there for a little while."

"Yeah?" is about all Sam can manage right now.

The nurse gives him a once over and asks how he's feeling (he manages another drug-slurred "yeah"), then says, "There's four people waiting to see you. Your father, Alan and Lora Bradley, and another woman. If you're feeling up to it, I'll let them in."

"Yeah," Sam replies, nodding. This makes his head spin, so he stops. "Yeah, I"m fine."

"All right." The nurse checks a few more things on and around his hospital bed, then leaves. Sam watches as his father and Alan and Lora and Quorra file in, all of them looking like they've been up all night. Sam can't help it; he smiles.

Flynn smiles back at him. "Hey, kiddo," he says. "How're you feeling?"

"Not bad," Sam replies slowly. "Probably the drugs."

His father laughs. "Yeah, probably. It's good to see you."

"Good to see you, too." He looks over at the others. "Hey, Alan, Lora."

Lora smiles at him, and Sam is grateful all over again for everything they've done for him, for being there after his father disappeared and his grandparents died, even when he didn't want them to be. Lora pats his arm gently. "We're glad you're all right, Sam."

"Me too," he says. "Hey, Quorra. How do you like the real world?"

"It's... different," she replies, turning away from the window. "The sun and the sky are beautiful, and coffee is a very strange drink. But... I like it." She smiles softly.

Sam laughs at the coffee comment, or tries to; it makes his side hurt even more, and he devolves into coughing for a few seconds. "I'm--I'm glad," he finally says. He sighs, laying his head back on the pillow. He feels suddenly exhausted, and he's not sure that he minds. More sleep sounds wonderful. "You're all still gonna be here when I wake up again, right?"

Flynn takes his hand and squeezes it. "I'm not going anywhere, Sam."

Sam manages a small smile as he closes his eyes. He's not sure if it's the drugs or the pain or what, but he feels like right now, decked out in a hospital bed and half-conscious, he's the happiest he's ever been.


	16. Epilogue: Three Months later

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME_

Flynn sighs. Three months, and his progress with Clu is almost unremarkable. He's been cut off from the rest of the system, trapped in a loop that he cannot escape or change. The fact that Flynn has carefully stripped him of his power has done nothing to improve his mood.

_I just want you to understand_ , Flynn types. The only thing Clu has access to is a small IO console, which allows them to speak. He's spend a lot of the last few weeks (for Flynn; cycles for him) not talking to Flynn; today is a rare moment. _An oppressed system is not a perfect one._

THE SYSTEM IS IN CHAOS WITHOUT ME_

_It's not._ This isn't quite true. There were nine cycles of fighting between the factions after Clu's disappearance. Flynn did what he could to help resistance fighters like Bartik, and it's only here recently that things have settled down and the sides have begun to _talk_ to each other. Flynn has faith that the system will be rebuilt and that it will be free. And maybe, some faraway day in the future, he can return to the Grid and see how it's gotten along without him.

But even that's not a certainty. Living again has been a far more rewarding experience. After a thousand cycles on the Grid, he'd almost forgotten how strange and crazy and wonderful and _ordinary_ this world could be. He is nothing resembling a god here. The world isn't ready to be read beneath his fingertips. He knows _nothing_ here, even after three months back in the world again. It's a wonderful feeling. He's discovering the world again, finding those parts of it he missed because he was too focused on work and the Grid and perfection. This world isn't perfect, and it never will be, and that is why it's beautiful.

I BUILT YOU THE PERFECT SYSTEM_

But for now, there is the problem of Clu. _You built perfection as you saw it,_ Flynn replies. _That doesn't make it good, or flawless._

I DID WHAT YOU WANTED_

_You did. It's my fault for not speaking to you when things changed._

IT'S YOUR FAULT THE SYSTEM IS FALLING APART WITHOUT ME_

_The system is not falling apart. It doesn't need you anymore._

THEN WHAT IS MY FUNCTION_

_Live your life. Appreciate what you can't change. Give up control. Remove yourself from the equation._ It's all Flynn wants him to understand. That life is not about perfection or control. It's about acceptance.

CONTROL IS WHAT YOU MADE ME FOR_

_It's not part of your function anymore. Learn to live without it_.

There's no response, and then: CONNECTION LOST_. The I/O interface closes and Flynn sighs again. Well, there's always tomorrow. There has always been tomorrow, for as long as he's been trying to get through to Clu. One day, he'll understand. Maybe.

He considers opening another I/O connection, this time to the city, just to see how things are coming along. But it can wait. He's tried not to let the Grid consume his time now that he's back. He limits himself to a few hours of work each day, so he can spend the rest on important things.

He's spent a great deal of time helping Quorra, and letting Sam help them both. He's done things like get a driver's license again, and going to the beach with Quorra. Little things. It turned out to be much easier not to resume his assets after his so-called resurrection (he wishes the press had picked a better term, but they were always one for dramatics, even before he disappeared). He forewent getting involved back at Encom, which was only a slight relief to Mackey and the board, because Sam _had_ decided to get involved again. Flynn has Sam to support him, and, after he spent a month fixing it up, he makes a tidy income from the arcade as well. He moved the Grid console up to his old apartment, and works there during the early evening slow hours.

He glances at the clock; it's nearly six p.m. Time to get ready. "Quorra," he says, "are you going to be okay up here by yourself?"

Quorra, who has been sitting on the low couch with yet another book, looks up. "Hm? Yes, I'll be fine." She glances at her book, then back at him. "How's Clu?"

"Belligerent," Flynn replies. "As always."

"You'll get through to him."

"Thanks, Q." Flynn knows Quorra has no love for Clu, but she also knows how important he is to him. He appreciates her reassurances.

"Time to make my nightly appearance," Flynn says, getting up from the Grid console. He's surprisingly still got the touch with the old arcade games, and though the novelty of seeing the "resurrected" Kevin Flynn in the flesh has worn off, the arcade still draws a decent crowd each night.

As he heads down to the main floor, he glances back at Quorra. She's adjusted to the world more quickly than he could have hoped, and for that, at least, he is glad.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Quorra reads, but she finds herself glancing up at the big console in the far corner of the apartment. Everything she'd ever known before coming here is in there. The Grid, the city, the Outlands... all of it. She wonders sometimes if she'd want to go back, but the answer is always no.

She thought she'd miss it more. It was a world she knew the rules of, a world she could operate in comfortably (or uncomfortably, given she was an Iso). There don't seem to be any rules here on Earth, except the ones of etiquette that are always unspoken until she breaks them. But even those don't bother her too much, since Sam or Lora or Flynn are usually there to help her out.

But here she's free. Free to be herself, free to go where she wants without fear of capture or deresolution. Free to read as many books as she likes. She smiles to herself at this, for she has brought nearly thirty books home from four different libraries, and she plans to read them all before they're due back.

It's hard to say what she likes the most about this world. The sunrises every morning and sunsets every night are spectacular. Food and drink and all their possibilities are a constantly evolving adventure. Libraries are the best possible places in the world, even more than the mountains or the beach. There's so much _world_ , and she's barely seen any of it.

There are other things, as well. Secrets being kept. Flynn's work on the Grid is ongoing, but she's heard him and Sam and Alan talking about taking it public. The impact for the Users--for humanity--would be enormous. Sam explained some of it to her. The time dilation between Earth and the Grid is the most significant part. A cycle here on Earth, a year, is over _fifty-two_ cycles on the Grid. Medical studies which require decades of work on Earth could be run within the space of ten weeks. Human medicine alone would be revolutionized. If they went public. And if the political situation on the Grid had calmed enough to allow Users free access.

And then there is the question of her. The only Iso on the Grid is now the only Iso on Earth, and they still don't know what makes her so different from humans or programs. Her code on the Grid was triple-helical; whether that holds true on Earth is something they haven't explored yet. There is _something_ different about her; the mark of the Isos on her arm remains, glowing in time to her breathing, and her blood, while normal enough at first, dries silvery-grey instead of the dark brown-red of the Users.

"We'll look into it when we're ready," Flynn has said, and she believes him. Some of the trouble, he's explained, is in finding doctors who will stay quiet when they reveal that Quorra isn't human, and when their tests tell them the same thing.

She worries about this sometimes, but reading takes her mind off it. She's already gotten a lot of attention from the press for showing up at the same time Flynn did, and being seen frequently in his and Sam's company. There are demands, she's heard, to know who she is and where she came from. Sam and Flynn deflect most of them, but she's been followed by reporters before. She's followed Sam's advice: keep your head down and don't respond.

But in spite of all that, she loves it here. She loves the books, and the sun and the stars, and the constant, strange imperfections that set this world apart. She misses the Grid sometimes, but not often. Usually it's in a frustrating moment when she doesn't understand human behavior or habits, but those moments pass.

Every day, she wakes up early to watch the sunrise. Every day, she's grateful to be here, under the sun, with all the books she could ever hope to read.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Sam parks his motorcycle alongside the curb outside Flynn's Arcade. After feeding half a dozen quarters to the brand new meter, he unstraps the travel basket on the back of his bike that holds Marv. They've both become fixtures of the arcade scene, Marv more than him. The little dog has his own bed at the arcade's main counter, and Sam's seen plenty of pictures of him online tagged #arcadedog. Plus, Marv likes the attention.

The arcade is a hive of activity, full of people playing games and other watching them. The jukebox is blasting another '80s hit, and everyone's having a good time. He leaves Marv with the girl at the counter, Karen, and heads off through the crowd in search of his father.

He finds him at last at one of the old Space Paranoids cabinets, holding court as he blasts his way through Recognizers in the game that he designed. There's a sizable crowd around him, cheering him on. Sam grins and hangs back, watching along with everyone else.

It's a long while before the game finally gets the better of Flynn. The game over message flashes on screen, followed by the high score list; he's made the top ten again. He enters the initials FLN, and Sam can see that he's dominating the list, with only a few outside contenders trying for his ultimate high score.

Sam threads through the dissipating crowd to clap his father on the shoulder. "Been playing video games all day again, Dad?" he asks, grinning.

"Oh, you know me," Flynn replies. "Can't put 'em down these days."

A few people are sticking around to hear this exchange between the famous Flynns. 

"You wanna go head to head against your old man?" Flynn asks, flipping him a quarter.

"Nah," Sam replies, catching it. "I don't think you could handle me."

"Don't think you could handle losing, you mean," Flynn shoots back, and they're grinning at each other as the crowd laughs. "Maybe some other time. Doubles, maybe."

"On the same team?" Sam asks.

"We're always on the same team, Sam," his father replies, giving Sam's shoulder a squeeze. He pulls Sam in for a quick embrace, and whispers, "I'll give you the update later tonight. Quorra's upstairs if you want to see her."

Sam nods. He and his father grin at each other again and part ways. Sam finds a kid to give his quarter to, then takes Marv from the counter and heads upstairs with him.

"Sam!" Quorra sets her book aside and hops up from the low sofa in the corner of the apartment. She gives him a quick hug, and then scratches Marv behind the ears. "How are you doing? How's Alan?"

"Alan's fine," Sam replies. "I'm doing good, too. What about you? How many books have you read today?"

"I finished two earlier. Now I'm on this one." She hurries back to the sofa to pick up her book again, and shows him the cover. _Cosmos,_ by Carl Sagan. "Have you heard of it?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "Can't say I've read it, but I've heard of it. What's it like?"

"It's fascinating. There are some parts I don't understand, but Flynn's been helping me with it." 

"That's good."

She looks down at the book, then back at him. "Did you have physical therapy today?"

"Yesterday," Sam says. "Peter says I'm doing well, I should be able to get over the limp here soon." Clu's attacks on him still pain him, though not much, and thanks to walking on it so much when it was injured, his leg is still in bad shape. He's been in physical therapy since he got out of the hospital, and he's glad to be making progress, however slow it is. He's got work at Encom to distract him from the pain, at least.

Encom is... well, it's work. Mackey was none too pleased when Sam showed up at the next board meeting, but he's mostly gotten over it. Sam's been working on the student and home versions of OS12, which he persuaded the board would be helpful to Encom's revenues. It's put him head to head with Ed Dillinger, Jr., who is at least not the cheat and thief that his father was.

And then there's the project with his father and Alan. Getting the Grid back in working order, and then taking it public. Realistically, it's not going to happen for another couple years at least, but it seems worth it now to work out logistics and so forth. His father was right all those years ago: the Grid could revolutionize humanity. It is only a matter of making sure it's safe.

Flynn had been giving him updates on the Grid, about the war that took place and about Clu, still locked in a stasis loop. He hasn't been able to find Tron. He's searched the Grid's code extensively, but there is no sign of him. Flynn sees only two possibilities: either Tron's code was so radically changed by Clu that it's now unrecognizable, or else he perished in the struggle at the Portal. They all believe the latter is far more likely, and Clu certainly isn't talking about what he did, or about anything at all.

Sam doesn't know if he'll go back to the Grid when they open it up again. There's too many painful memories there, and even if it is safe, he feels like he'll always be looking over his shoulder. The attitude towards Users certainly wasn't very kind when Clu was in charge; who's to say that attitude will have changed all that much by the time they're ready?

It doesn't matter now, though. For now, he's got his father, and Quorra, and Alan and Lora. He's got real work to worry about, instead of constantly tinkering about in his apartment. Things have changed since that night he went on the Grid, and most of them have changed for the better.

He puts Marv down (the dog immediately runs and jumps up on the sofa, with Quorra’s help), grabs a beer from the mini fridge up here, and sits down with Quorra as she continues to read.

Life is good. All is well.

**ooo ooo ooo**

Tron fell when Clu disappeared and the Portal closed. He might have fallen all the way and been derezzed in the crashing Sea, but he caught on to a rough spot in the cliff face, and he hung there for a while. Since then he has slowly made his way to the top, testing every crevice and nook carefully as he pulls himself up.

Finally, he makes it to the uppermost ledge. The Portal is closed, but the wind still rages. He wills his helmet away and feels the wind on his face for the first time in a thousand cycles. His face is scarred, like the rest of him. Clu was not kind when he repurposed him all those cycles ago. He'll live, though. He's good at surviving.

He eventually makes his way down the stairs, to the platform where the light jet, slightly damaged but still stable, waits. He climbs into the pilot's seat and powers it up. He's got to get back to the Grid.

He has work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's all, folks.
> 
> Thanks for reading. If you ever commented, thank you. If you'd like to comment, please do. I want to know what you think.
> 
> Thanks again for reading. Thank you for your endless patience. I never thought I would get this story done, and yet here we are. 
> 
> Thank you.


End file.
